


Heavy in Your Arms

by Koren M (CyberMathWitch)



Series: Heavy In Your Arms [1]
Category: Marvel Avengers Movies Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Being Trapped, Dub Con If You Consider Mystical/Destiny Sorts Of Compulsions Dubious Consent, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, F/M, Fire, First Meetings, Implication of Violence Around/To Children Off-Screen, Natasha Might Agree With You, Nightmares, On the Run, Original Character(s), Red Room, Soul Bond, Soulmates, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Vague Mentions of Child Abuse, general Red Room evilness, mentions of forced medical procedures
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-26
Updated: 2013-07-28
Packaged: 2017-11-16 07:27:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 49,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/536997
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CyberMathWitch/pseuds/Koren%20M
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>For every romantic happily-ever-after there were also horror stories of the pain and torment that awaited those who found and lost their soul mate.  A favorite trope was the idea of soul mates who were on opposite sides of a line, who chose to kill one another than betray their beliefs or live without their companion, or stories where one's mate was torn from them by the forces of evil - the list of ways it could go south seemed endless.</i>  An AU, in which Clint knows all the stories about how it could go wrong.  He never expected it to be real, and staring back at him from the other side of his arrow.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [heartequals (savvygambols)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/savvygambols/gifts).



> **Much, much <3 and many thanks to [](http://kadollan.livejournal.com/profile)[**kadollan**](http://kadollan.livejournal.com/) , [](http://lar-laughs.livejournal.com/profile)[**lar_laughs**](http://lar-laughs.livejournal.com/)** , and [SidheRa](http://sidhera.tumblr.com)!
> 
> A fill for [](http://heartequals.livejournal.com/profile)[**heartequals**](http://heartequals.livejournal.com/) 's prompt at the [](http://be-compromised.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://be-compromised.livejournal.com/)**be_compromised** 's awesome Promptathon of Awesomeness:  
> 
>
>>   
>  _Have we had a request for soulbonding/imprinting fic yet? And if not, may I request soulbonding/imprinting fic where "making a different call" actually meant "we couldn't let each other go"? It's not even about love, it's about self-preservation. And all that that entails of course -- for civilians it's this happy wonderful thing, finding your other half, but this is SHIELD. Natasha's still programmed to kill everything and Clint's trained to work alone for months on end and on top of that soulbonding tests/paperwork/lifestyle changes/etc. It's so overwhelming that at the end of the day they don't have the energy to actually try to get to know each other, so they just sit in silence and hold each other. (And then later they become sexy master assassins who drop everything when the other is compromised.)_   
> 
> 
> Also inspired by the prompt from [](http://workerbee73.livejournal.com/profile)  
> [](http://workerbee73.livejournal.com/)**workerbee73** :  
> 
>
>>   
> _place me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm_  
>  for love is as strong as death  
> 
> 
> Title is from Florence + the Machine's ["Heavy in Your Arms"](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BELNiWGF0aM)
> 
> I'm trying something new, and doing this as a WIP, since it - amazingly - seems to be coming in chronological order. IDEK.

_Whispering like it's a secret  
Only to condemn the one who hears it_

*****

This was not happening.

This was _not_ happening.

Clint stared down the line of his arrow to the vibrant picture she made - the rich colors of her hair that moved through the spectrum of reds from flame to blood, the narrowed eyes that were a vivid green, all on a canvas of pale, perfect skin held in a black silk dress designed to play light and shadow over her curves.

He'd destroyed art before. That wasn't the problem.

The problem was the niggling sense, in the back of his mind, that this was _not_ a shot he wanted to take. That sense was never wrong, though _he'd_ been wrong, the handful of times he'd ignored it. There was always something, some reason even if he couldn't nail it down that he shouldn't do... whatever it was he was about to do. He wasn't a superstitious man generally, didn't consider himself religious, and he knew that more likely than not it was his subconscious picking up on things he couldn't quite get.

It didn't make it any less inconvenient. Only seconds away from taking out the Black fucking Widow, which would have been a career-maker, and he had to go getting that _sense_. (If the last time he'd ignored it hadn't gone so spectacularly wrong and ended up with his ass in jail on three separate murder charges, he might've ignored it. But it had, so he wouldn't.)

She had seen him, which was impressive in and of itself. He'd gotten a good long look at exactly why she was whispered about, why many thought she was unkillable. Immortal. She was really, really good. And she was staring directly at him, and she watched him as he slowly, almost painfully lowered his bow. He was on a rooftop two buildings over, close enough he didn't have to use any kind of additional sights to get a good look, but far enough away that most marks would never have noticed him.

It was easy to meet her eyes. They were just spots of color from here, but they gave him a gnawing sense of wanting to know more. He wanted to know exactly what they looked like up close before he killed her, as if that made any more sense.

She wasn't moving away. Even as he started creeping across the roof, moving easily from fire escapes to masonry, she didn't so much as flinch, and he didn't take his eyes off of her. There was no way he could get to the bow now slung across his back before she drew down on him, but he had his back-up in his side holster for a quick draw. It would be close, though. Walking up to her without a weapon drawn ought to be the stupid thing, but he couldn't help but feel it was a far righter course of action than shooting her hand been.

He wondered if he had an idiotic look on his face as he approached her.

Possibly.

She had an expressionless face, it was just a mask currently in repose, waiting for something to react to, to give it shape. It fascinated him. The reasonable part of his brain told him to shape the fuck up and he put it down sharply.

"You haven't shot me yet," she said mildly in Russian, as if she was discussing the weather with someone she'd never met.

"No," he replied in kind, "I haven't."

"Why not?" She hadn't reached for her gun either. He didn't know her body language well enough to know if she was biding her time or literally disinterested in the turn this seemed to be taking.

"Honestly?" he asked, with bitter amusement lacing his voice, "I have no idea. Doesn't feel right," he admitted.

She scoffed at him. "That's no reason."

He shrugged. "It is for me. It doesn't happen often, but when it does, I try to listen to it."

"Snipers are a superstitious lot," was her disdainful reply.

She'd let him get closer while they were talking and he stood within arms reach. His hands were itching, and he realized he was fighting the urge to touch her. _What the fuck was wrong with him?_

It was then he saw her hand twitch, just slightly, before she curled her fingers tightly into a fist. It telegraphed her movement just a fraction of a second before she swung at him, but it was enough that he was able to shift and catch her arm rather than take the blow.

What _should_ have happened was he should have put his weight behind it, used her momentum to pull her around and hopefully gotten her turned with her arm behind her body.

That's what should have happened.

What actually happened was something entirely different.

The moment his bare hand touched her bare arm, skin on skin, there was a rush like the concussion wave off an explosion and the world went white around the edges. When it returned, seconds later, he was looking into those eyes he'd wanted to badly to see up close, his hand was gripping her arm with bruising force and she had an equally strong grip on the sleeve of his tac jacket.

"What the fucking hell?" he managed, in English, while she echoed similar sentiments in Russian.

His ear-piece crackled to life and Coulson's voice came through the comm. _"Barton, report."_

Each second that passed was marked with his heartbeat that he could hear echoing in his ears.

_"Barton? Barton!"_

"We're good here. I'm okay." It was the best he could do.

 _"What's going on out there, Barton?"_ Coulson's voice was calm, it was always calm, but he'd learned to read him and could tell he was worried.

"I have no idea," he responded. He didn't look away from her.

_"Is the target neutralized?"_

"That... would depend entirely on your definition of neutralized, sir," Clint admitted.

She moved her hand, the one that had been on his jacket, slid up until her fingers could press against the uncovered skin of his neck. The contact prickled along his skin and down his spine like brushing a live wire and he felt his breath catch. He felt like he could drown in her if he let himself, and a part of him really _wanted_ to, while the rest of him had alarm bells clanging through his brain. He wanted to tilt his head towards her hand so that she would keep touching him, keep her close, anything to not lose that contact.

_"Barton, what is the target's status?"_

"Contained," he managed and she started to try to pull away. "You're coming with me."

"And why would I do that?"

"Because the other alternatives are I kill you or you kill me, and I don't think either one of us wants to be doing that right now, do you?"

He watched her mouth tense, the only sign of her displeasure.

*****

During flight back from the burned out industrial complex he kept her close. He chalked the low-level buzz he was feeling up to receding adrenaline and the mission having gone something like sideways. She was sitting stiffly in the seat beside him, and the small space meant they were touching, shoulder to knees. He managed to tell himself that he shouldn't be thinking about putting his hands back on her bare skin. Barely.

When they arrived, several heavily armed agents escorted her out of the hangar bay and he reluctantly watched her go. He was frustrated with himself for wanting to follow them.

"What the hell were you thinking, Barton?" Coulson asked, although he didn't raise his voice.

"I...," and he realized he actually had no idea. There was no explanation for just stopping like he had. Except...

"She looked at me."

Coulson looked up from his paperwork in surprise. "I'm sorry?"

"She looked at me. Right at me, from about 50 yards away. She looked me straight in the eye."

"Disconcerting to be sure, but-"

"It was the wrong thing to do, Coulson. I knew. Just like I knew back in Georgia, when I didn't- it was the _wrong_ thing, to shoot her. She didn't shoot me either," he added as an afterthought. There was a tension building within him, spinning tighter. The general sense of unsettled energy he'd felt on the flight back seemed to be increasing. He felt a little like he wanted to crawl out of his skin.

"You certainly gave her plenty of opportunity. You're a seasoned agent, you _know_ better, and I'm still not sure how to play that in my reports."

Clint shook his head, unable to really help with that, either. They sat there in a not quite comfortable silence while Phil flipped through documents and made the occasional notes, and Clint wrote out the long-hand version of events as he remembered them. He'd been about halfway through the extraction itself when he clenched his hand hard enough the pen snapped and he curled inward on himself.

"Barton?" Coulson's voice was sharp, a command more than a question, asking what was wrong.

He couldn't talk around it though, he was just trying to breathe through the crawling, burning tension he could feel through his whole body.

*****

The pain had eased off by the time he'd reached the medical bay, and he'd found himself momentarily distracted by a flash of red through the nearby curtains as Coulson led him to an exam room. The doctors were stumped. That wasn't exactly reassuring news, but his bloodwork came back clean - they'd tested for every poison known to man (and some known only to SHIELD) but they'd come up with zip. Zilch. Nada. So they'd stuck him in a quarantine cell and told him to stay there for the next 6 hours, just in case, to see if his reaction came back.

It sucked.

Whatever he was reacting to, it had leveled off to a dull hum in his blood stream, still disconcerting but not debilitating. And he was bored. Normally boredom wasn't that big a problem for him. There was a quiet place in his mind he could slip into, and ignore the passage of time. It was one of the things that made him good at his job, but usually? There was a purpose to it. Something he was watching for, waiting on. Something.

This was just waiting. While people watched him, to see if he'd keel over and die.

He kept flexing his fingers, curling his hands into fists and then stretching them out like he wanted to grab onto something that wasn't there.

Someone who wasn't there.

The feel of her skin under his hand was running through his brain on a goddamn loop and he could not find the stop button. It was accompanied by the image of her eyes and the sound of her voice. He was starting to wonder if maybe he was losing his mind.

*****

"You're free to leave," Coulson informed him when he finally came to open the door. "The docs have cleared you and there's no sign of any kind of infection."

"I coulda told you that," he muttered darkly but only once he was outside the door of the holding room.

"I still need you to come and finish the debrief though."

Of course he did, Clint thought.

When they reached a conference room, Coulson gestured him inside and made a point of locking the door behind them.

"Do you have any better idea now why you didn't take the shot?"

"No, sir." Clint responded to the question with honest bewilderment. "Still none."

There was a long, drawn out silence while Coulson frowned. Actually, actively frowned, and that was a new experience for Clint to see.

"There's one... fairly outlandish suggestion."

Clint raised an eyebrow.

"Have you ever heard of the term 'soul mates'?"

Clint's other eyebrow winged up to meet it. "I'm sorry?" He had, of course. Everyone had. The idea saturated popular culture like a drug sometimes. It was an incredibly rare phenomenon, relegated to the land of story books (or movies), with the occasional real-life example just to keep the myth alive. Two people (or if you were a real heretic, more) whose very souls were so completely enmeshed they weren't whole without the other. Where their very lives - heartrate, breathing, metabolic responses, all of it was keyed to one another. For every romantic happily-ever-after there were also horror stories of the pain and torment that awaited those who found and lost their soul mate. A favorite trope was the idea of soul mates who were on opposite sides of a line, who chose to kill one another than betray their beliefs or live without their companion, or stories where one's mate was torn from them by the forces of evil - the list of ways it could go south seemed endless.

No way in hell.

It didn't happen to people like him, people like them. It was too outlandish of a notion to be believed, and Coulson didn't honestly think-

"You weren't the only one who collapsed. She wasn't quite as vocal about it, but she hit the floor right around the same time you nearly did."

Clint realized suddenly that he was rubbing at his throat, over and over again where she'd touched him. It almost hummed, like he was a little too close to a live wire.

"Did she even out too?"

"She was in the room next to yours in quarantine. Once you were within a few yards of one another you both got better."

"She still down there?"

Coulson's jaw tightened.

"So you brought me up here to see if it would happen again?"

"Something like that." To Coulson's credit, he didn't dissemble about it. SHIELD wasn't above using him and Romanov as lab rats if they decided they needed to.

Because there wasn't anything he could really do about it, Clint dropped into the chair in front of the table and propped his feet up, hands laced loosely over his stomach, and waited to see if the pain returned. He certainly wasn't what he would consider "comfortable" with the humming across his skin.

All of it hinged on their soul mate theory being correct, and he thought that was so unlikely it was laughable.

"You don't seriously believe in this crazy theory, do you Phil?"

"It might not be so crazy." There was a look on Coulson's face and Clint knew that look. It was the "I have more information about this than you do and I'm not going to share it" look and normally that was par for the course on a mission, and Clint could accept it and go on. But not this time. Not about something like this.

"What aren't you telling me?" he got out through gritted teeth, because he could feel the low burn in his bloodstream begin to ramp up again.

"It is a rare phenomenon," Coulson began, and it was obvious he was choosing his words very, very carefully. "But it does exist. SHIELD makes it a point to know about this kind of thing just like any other phenomenon that could have an impact."

He didn't look like he was about to explain what that might mean. Of course not.

"This kind of magic is powerful and not something to be played with. It destroys more people than it helps."

"So what aren't you telling me?" Clint asked.

"Barton, you've been compromised. She's still the enemy." There was a sadness in the senior agent's eyes - the only place he'd let any hint of emotion show through. He didn't give Clint a chance to respond, just calmly turned and left. The click of the door relocking behind him was a loud echo in the heavy silence.

*****

Even the conference rooms had observation capabilities, and he watched Barton on one screen with Romanov on the other, waiting to see when they'd start showing signs of discomfort. He didn't let himself think about the concert tickets that sat in a locked safe in his bunk.

She was with an orchestra in Toronto, had been for a year or so. He'd been to see her no less than fifteen times in the ten years since they'd first met while he was undercover with SHIELD, and there wasn't a day that went by in which he didn't say "thank you" to a god he couldn't help but believe in that he'd never touched her. He'd given her a polite smile and nod as his cover identity had been introduced, nothing more.

Just from the eye contact, he couldn't help but go to see her when he could, even if it was from the back of a packed auditorium. He often wondered if she felt a similar pull towards someone she would never be able to find.

"You told him yet?" Fury finally stepped forward from his position in the back of the room. Phil didn't turn around.

"No, sir. Only that he's considered a compromised asset at this time. He's not going to respond well."

"I don't imagine he would," Fury growled. "My question for you is do you think he'll follow through?"

The rumor mill said that Fury had a soul mate once, and that she'd been killed. Reports varied as to how: people suspected everything from an accidental shooting to Fury assassinating her himself. The stories said no one survived that kind of trauma, but if anyone could, people supposed it would be the Director.

"I don't know, sir," Phil finally admited.

"Well, we might as well find out, shouldn't we?"

*****

When the door opened again, Clint had to look up from where he was sitting by the wall, curled in on himself.

"Why the hell would it work this way?" he asked as Phil looks down at him. There wasn't a clock on the wall, but Clint guessed several hours had passed.

"No one knows. Whatever forces are involved are far beyond what our current science understands."

"I knew that. What now? Do they have enough proof? Can I see her again?"

"If I put the two of you together, what happens then? What if you cement the bond? She's still the enemy."

"Maybe she'll turn. You've seen her file too, she'd be a hell of an asset to SHIELD. The intel she has alone-"

"Maybe you will."

Coulson's words were as effective as a bucket of ice water and Clint froze. "What?"

"There's no assurance you won't decide to defect from SHIELD and go back with her. It could just as easily go that way."

Clint was pretty sure that it wasn't Coulson talking, that it was what someone else - probably Fury - told him to say, but the implications were... bad.

"What are you planning to do about that?" he asked evenly. He dropped into the headspace he used on a mission, on a hit, that cold emptiness where everything was cut and dried, black and white, clear edges and decisive action.

"The only way to guarantee that you haven't been irreversibly compromised is to remove her from the equation."

"You're going to kill her?"

"No. You are."


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _"You don't have an actual plan, do you?"_
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> _"I'm pretty much at the 'keeping you alive' stage of things right now. That's as far as I've gotten."_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See Chapter 1 for more notes.
> 
> Thanks, as always to my lovely, lovely betas, Kadollan, and SidheRa!

She wasn't sure how long she'd been in the cell - hours maybe. The pain had receded so she'd let herself drift into a semi-sleep to recharge. It wouldn't be enough to sustain her for long but it helped as she came down from the adrenaline and evened out. When she woke up she was disgusted to find herself rubbing her hand back and forth over her forearm where he'd held onto her on the rooftop. She was still pissed at herself for not shooting him when she'd had the chance. 

Then the buzzing, wanting, aching in her body had returned.

If she didn't know better, she'd think someone was concocting some kind of elaborate con to get information out of her. It might be possible, she allowed, that they actually _were_ but as time drew on and no one even came to question her, she doubted it.

She knew about things like soul bonds. She had more information than most people did about them, because it was a powerful way to manipulate someone. If you could get them to believe in the possibility of something like that, you could use it as leverage against them to gather information. People generally wanted to believe in it enough that convincing them they were feeling things they weren't was laughably easy. She hadn't ever thought too long or hard about whether or not it could happen for real because it hadn't mattered to her. Even if it were true, she'd reasoned, she didn't have a soul in the first place, so she was safe.

She didn't want it. She did not want to be tied to someone else and have her very survival depend on them. She was a force unto herself, an assassin, a spy, _and that was all_. Period. 

So why did she want so desperately to see him again? 

*****

The hallway felt endless, but he hoped it would never end. Clint felt the weight and pull of the gun in his hand. It was cold and heavy and was familiar but at the same time it was _wrong_.

"No." He pulled up short, stopping in the middle of the corridor. The two agents flanking him reached for their own weapons and he held up his free hand. "No - I can't do it like this. Phil," he turned his head and looked back at the man he'd once considered to be his friend. "Get me my bow. If I have to - it's better that way."

Coulson nodded, gestured at the other agents to stand down, and turned and headed back the way they'd come without a second glance.

It didn't take him long to return with the bow and quiver. Clint swapped with him and didn't miss the subtle relief on the others' faces when he no longer had a loaded gun in his hand. _Idiots_ he thought to himself, that they hadn't learned by now the older weapon was just as deadly, just as quickly.

It was thirty more feet to her cell. He could tell where she was, knew without asking which door she was behind. 

He also knew, because he knew the ship inside and out, exactly where the access panels were on this level. Maybe he ought to have kept the gun, but he could stall just a little longer with the bow, particularly if she made some gesture or comment about his choice of weapons. He could brag a bit, grandstand for her and that would buy him some more time. As plans went it wasn't the most well thought out, but it was what he had to work with.

They were giving him a wide berth and he wondered if they were afraid of her or of what they thought they were about to witness. It was the stuff of horror stories after all. That would work to his advantage, too.

The door swung open and the first thing he did was look at her. A calm, warm, _settled_ feeling stole over him as he let his eyes follow the curves of her face, her hair, then down over her shoulder to the line of her arm crossed protectively over her midsection in a gesture designed to make her appear weak and helpless. Anywhere else it would probably also be hiding a knife or other weapon in her hand until the last possible and most deadly moment. SHIELD wouldn't have left her with anything to use as a weapon but it was still a good psychological effect if you didn't recognize it as such.

Her eyes immediately found the bow and arrow in his grip and he raised it so the sharp tip was trained directly on her throat.

"You couldn't kill me before, so you're going to do it now?"

"I've been given orders. They think you've compromised me, so in order to prove my loyalty they want me to kill you and remove the threat."

"Do you think you'll survive that experience?"

"I know I won't survive the alternative. SHIELD doesn't take kindly to traitors." This was going even better than he'd hoped. The longer they talked, the more anxious the agents behind him were getting. He couldn't tell how Coulson was reacting from here, but he... had hope. 

"If you're going to go ahead, then do it. I certainly would prefer death now to the alternative."

That brought him up short. "Which alternative would that be? Right now, in all of these scenarios, you die."

"I meant to being caught in this," she gave up the pretense of injury and gestured between them, "whatever this is. Of being bound to someone and dependent on them. Death would be preferable."

"What, I'm not pretty enough for you?"

She almost smiled, he could see it hinting at the corners of her mouth.

"Hardly. This kind of connection would be a weakness, and I don't do weakness."

"That's not what the stories say. They talk about how two are stronger together than apart and all that bullshit."

"It's just that. Bullshit, as you put it. Having someone else makes you a larger target and gives your enemies more ways to hurt you. And having someone you can't live without? That's the greatest liability of all. I don't do liabilities, either."

"Me either, as a rule."

"I'm waiting."

He sunk into the feel of the bow, the tension of the string, the brush of the fletching against his cheek as he drew back. The tip stayed in his line of sight right over her throat until the very last fraction of second, and just as he was losing the arrow, he pulled the shot to the left. It sailed cleanly through the air and sliced a shallow cut across her cheek and slipped through her hair. There was a thunk as it encountered the wall behind her.

*****

Her eyes went wide but her lips were pressed into a thin, silent line. A throat shot would've been soundless. She wasn't sure what he was up to, but she knew there were others outside that she couldn't see and she didn't think they were at an angle to see her, either.

The next parts happened in rapid succession. He pivoted, pulling another arrow from his quiver in a move so fast it was blurred. It found it's target in the hall and there was shouting and coughing and she wondered just what that particular arrow had done.

"Cover your mouth and nose with something," he called back over his shoulder even as he was diving to the ground and bullets winged off the corridor walls nearby. She quickly tore off a strip of material from the hem of her shirt. He was gesturing sharply at her to follow him and she scrambled to her feet. 

Fabric pressed tightly to her face, she ran behind him until they reached the end and he stopped in front of a panel about four feet square. He been covering his own mouth and had tears running down his cheeks from the chemicals, but he reached out and lifted off the panel, then waved her inside. "Ventilation and maintenance access. We're about four floors directly below the hangar deck."

So they were making a break for it, then. She could certainly work with that. Once she was inside and he'd climbed in after her, she turned to him before starting to climb. "Do you have a back-up weapon?"

"What? Yeah. Here." He tugged a small handgun out of a a holster near his boot and handed it to her.

"Thank you." It felt much better to have a ranged weapon of her own. She tucked it into the back waistband of the pants they'd given her when she'd come on board.

"Do you know how to swim?"

The look she shot him had annihilated lesser men. "Of course I know how to swim."

"Right. Well, how far can you swim, in the condition you're in right now?"

"How far will you need me to? Several miles, at least."

His eyebrows arched appreciatively. "Nice. We're probably about two miles out to sea."

"That's doable."

The ventilation shaft terminated along the hull and it only took about 30 seconds for Clint to disassemble the access panel so they could both fit through. Cool night air came streaming in and she looked out, then down at the dark water below them. Far, far below them - they were sitting about three stories up. 

"Once we jump, head straight for shore. We'll regroup and see how we stand."

"You don't have an actual plan, do you?"

He caught her gaze with his own and she realized she'd been avoiding direct eye contact with him. She didn't like the feeling that someone was seeing straight through her.

"I'm pretty much at the 'keeping you alive' stage of things right now. That's as far as I've gotten."

The words were flippant, but the tone and the look on his face were decidedly not.

"How long did you follow me before trying to kill me?" she wondered aloud.

"A while. How long did you know I was there?"

"Not quite that long," she admitted, feeling decidedly uncomfortable with the thought.

Metal clanging echoed through the tunnels and she shook herself back into the immediate present. Another quick glance down at the water, and this time when she looked up, he was holding out his hand.

Taking a series of progressively deeper breaths she laced her fingers through his before she could stop herself and actually shuddered at the warmth that swept over her from the contact. Her hand tightened on his involuntarily, and then they were both flying, falling towards the water below. The metaphor was not lost on her.

*****

Their hands slipped apart as the icy cold water of the Atlantic closed over their heads. He knew he had to trust that she was beside him, there was no visibility under the water in the dark and he started powering towards the shore.

It was only a matter of time before SHIELD realized they were off the carrier and sent out helicopters and quinjets to try to scan the water for them. There was a narrow window of coastline where they could crawl out and they'd swarm those locations, too. Speed was their only defense. He just hoped she could keep up. He had no idea how much the Red Room had or hadn't pushed a skill like swimming, but she'd seemed confident enough of her abilities.

Time was as fluid as the ocean - he had no idea how long they swam, but eventually, they reached a point that he could look ahead and see the coast, along with the shadows of people moving rapidly up and down the beach searching for them. He stopped, treading water and shivering and suddenly felt her along the line of his back. 

"Now what?" she asked, sounding as out of breath as he was.

"We go sideways and hope we can find some area they haven't gotten to. It's not the best plan, but I can't think of another one, can you?"

She was silent for several long minutes, then, "maybe I can. Look to your right."

He turned his head and narrowed his eyes, forcing the barely discernible gray tones to become identifiable shapes. Boats. Houseboats, by the look of them. 

"Think you can make it that far?" she asked.

"Yeah. You?"

"Of course." She looked so affronted he had to smile despite how cold he was. 

"Third one from the end looks deserted, lets try it first. With any luck, we can hide aboard until SHIELD is done with this stretch."

******

The boat was empty, and they managed to haul themselves out of the water despite being numb and shaky from the cold. Natasha made sure to keep any contact between them as brief and cursory as possible, grabbing at clothing rather than skin when she could. She kept noticing his hands shifting, like he would start to reach out to her, then change his mind and shift away again. 

If anyone used the boat, it wasn't often. There wasn't any food on board, and scant possessions beyond basics like some dishes in the galley and the equipment necessary to run the ship itself. If silence hadn't been imperative she might've cried with joy when she uncovered a stash of blankets in a cabinet. They were coarse and utilitarian but that would still serve her purposes. Any kind of fire or power would alert the SHIELD agents, but they still needed to get warm.

"I found blankets," she announced in little more than a whisper when he entered the room.

"Good. There's crawl space in between the two levels of the ship."

"What are you thinking?"

"It'll be a tight fit, but if we hide down there and make sure to pack the area around us with boxes, they hopefully won't find us. If they do find us, we'll have a better chance of making it out since they'll be restricted to one at a time. I'm hoping they'll assume we drowned, but I wouldn't count on it."

She considered his plan, found it mostly acceptable. She didn't like the idea of being in such close quarters with him for so long (not with the steady hum of the bond trying to pull them together), but it was far preferable to either going back into the icy water or being found and killed by SHIELD. She was nothing if not practical, after all. 

There was also the consideration that it would be far warmer with two bodies generating heat in a closed, insulated space and she had no interest in frostbite.

"Just make sure to keep your hands to yourself."

*****

It was a long time before they heard the ringing sound of booted feet on the deck above them. They were huddled at the end of the crawl space with as many boxes and items as they could find wedged in with them to leave the least amount of visible room possible. They'd crawled in, padded the space with blankets to muffle any stray noise, and then brought down the rest of the items to fill in the remaining space under the hatch. If the searchers decided to take the whole place apart they'd be found, but if there was some kind of miracle they wouldn't go that far, wouldn't think two people could empty and repack an entire crawlspace after a three mile, cold ocean swim.

She honestly wasn't sure how they'd managed it herself, other than sheer will and desperation. 

It was warm in their little space, but very, very crowded. Two full grown people could fit side by side only if they were pressed together, and by necessity he'd looped an arm around her waist and her head was tucked under his chin. She had the guns, because she was in front and this angle gave her just a little bit wider range of motion should they need it. He was unarmed and relying on her to keep them both alive. She couldn't decide if he was being practical or stupid.

The last few hours had been a subtle kind of torture, being so close to him. It was distracting, for one thing. Half her brain seemed to focus on nothing but him - where he was, what he was doing, whether or not she could reach out and touch him - the other half was scrambling to try and think of ways out of this mess, as well as keeping her traitorous hands in check, because she did want to reach out and it was making her angry. She didn't want people, didn't need them - she was perfectly content on her own. Other people were likely to get you killed, and this situation wasn't changing her opinions on that front.

As people moved above them, the hand not around her waist crept up until he was covering her mouth and nose lightly and she could feel that he was burying his face in her hair to muffle the sounds of his own breathing. The footsteps came closer until they were right over their heads. She felt his heart rate speed up against her back and his fingers tighten against her jaw. The metal of the hatch screeched as it was opened and she lined up the gun in her right hand with where she knew the opening to be. Something tapped the boxes. Low voices spoke but they were too muffled to make out full words. 

She could hear the shifting of cardboard against cardboard and imagined they were pulling out some of the things to see what was behind them. Which of course would be more boxes, because they were wedged several layers thick.

Time stood still except for their breath and heart beats. Maybe those stopped too, just for a moment.

Then there was another sharp clang as whoever it was dropped the hatch back down, and voices raised to a normal pitch called out orders and the boots moved away, back up to the deck and out of the danger zone. Tension seeped slowly out of her arms as she lowered them and sagged just slightly back against him.

Clint's hand lowered from her mouth even as the arm around her waist tightened and she felt him press his face more firmly against her neck through her hair. She almost thought she felt the ghost of his lips against her skin, just for a second.

They both knew better than to say anything out loud, and realized they need to stay hidden for another few hours to be safe. But it seemed like the immediate danger - the immediate _external_ danger, Natasha corrected herself, had passed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Interlude: Bleed Out](http://archiveofourown.org/works/537013) was originally posted between Chapters 2 and 3.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _He knew what kind of resources SHIELD would come at them with, and he had no idea how they were going to survive it._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See Chapter 1 for more notes.
> 
> All the thanks to WorkerBee73's wonderful enablement and beta skills, and also to everyone who threw music suggestions my way.
> 
> [Interlude: Bleed Out](http://archiveofourown.org/works/537013) was originally posted between Chapters 2 and 3.

Coulson wanted to pace as he waited outside Fury's office, but he hadn't gotten his reputation for calm and control by giving into such impulses.

He knew what he was walking into. The rest of SHIELD might buy that he'd been overcome by the tear gas or that they'd been too far away, but Fury knew better. The Director was well aware of what he was capable of in a combat situation and wouldn't doubt that Coulson had let them get away.

So it really came down to whether or not he could convince Fury that he had a good reason to let them live.

"My office. Now." In a voice that brooked no argument, Fury summoned him inside.

When the door closed, Coulson looked evenly at the man sitting behind the desk, fingers steepled and a single critical eye turned in his direction.

"You want to explain what _happened_ in that hallway, Agent?"

Coulson kept his breathing even. "Agent Barton used an arrow armed with tear gas to distract and temporarily immobilize our security team and managed to escape our detention facility with the asset code named "Black Widow" sir."

"There's a few things wrong with that statement, Agent Coulson. Do you honestly expect me to believe he just got the drop on you? And I'd hardly call her an asset."

"Sir. Agent Barton's actions, while understandable after the fact, were unanticipated at the time. And the operative in captivity had come in voluntarily. I believe she was prepared to give us information and possibly to request to defect to our side."

"And what exactly gave you that impression? I've replayed the tapes, Coulson. She never said word one about any intel or defection."

"She didn't shoot Barton, sir. When they were on the roof in Brussels, she had ample opportunity to take him out and run. She did neither, and in fact allowed him to cuff her and bring her in. Those are hardly the actions of a hostile force."

Fury's face tightened. "So you expect me to believe that just because she might have some kind of bond with Barton, she would be willing to go against the organization that's been training and probably brain-washing her for god knows how many years? And we were just supposed to go along with that? Meanwhile, Barton's been compromised."

"I believe if they'd been allowed to complete the bond, they would have both chosen to stay with SHIELD, yes."

"You've got nothing, Agent, except some questionable behaviour of your own. Don't think I don't know what you do when you're on leave, Coulson. I haven't had her relocated because you've done a good job keeping it under control. But if I even _think_ that your personal feelings are getting in the way of you doing your job, I will have her hidden so deep not even you will be able to find her. Don't think I won't. Soul mates are liabilities agents can't afford."

Coulson's hand tightened into a fist, but he knew better than to react in any other way. 

"Do you understand me, Agent? Find Barton and Romanov and get rid of the problem."

"Yes, sir."

*****

It was dark and warm in the crawl space. Only the memory of how cold the water had been and the sound of boots on metal kept her from pulling away from him and taking her chances outside. 

She was accustomed to how bodies fit together, in bed, out of bed, in dark corners or on brightly lit ballroom floors. She knew how to give the impression of arousal, how to change her breathing ever so slightly, how to use other physical activities or make up to look flushed and bright eyed. She knew how to hold her head and lower her eyelids to mask the lack of dilation in her pupils, and how to use the rush of adrenaline an op provided to increase her pulse and heartbeat. 

She even knew how to enjoy sex on a purely physical level. Her body could respond to the appropriate physical stimuli just fine.

But this was different.

She wasn't sure she remembered the last time she'd been attracted to someone on her own rather than as part of an act she was embracing. Through her blurred adolescent memories she could guess there had been such instances as her hormones had changed and her training had accelerated, but there was very little of that time she could see clearly. They'd made sure of that. By the time her memories solidified, it was all routine and rote practice.

Natasha knew in the back of her mind that this still wasn't a truthful response. Metaphysics she hadn't counted on being real were making her into their puppet just as surely as the Red Room always had. It didn't change the fact that she was fighting against her instincts, all of which were screaming at her to turn over in his arms and touch him. To kiss him, and let the flood of energy pull them under until they drowned.

Only the knowledge that he seemed to be fighting it just as much as she was kept her stiffly on her side and facing away. There was no question he was aroused too, but his arms stayed around her, and his hands hadn't strayed from safe areas even once. She knew her proximity was having an effect, but he'd lain just as still as she had.

"I think it's probably safe to stick our heads out and take a look around," he murmured against her ear and she couldn't suppress a shiver that stole through her body. His grip on her waist tightened in response and she felt as much as heard him suck in a sharp breath as she moved against him.

Eyes closed, she counted down from ten before moving again, this time putting several inches of space between them. The loss of contact was like someone had dumped cold water on her face.

If getting the boxes into place had been awkward and time consuming, getting back out was more so. It took almost twenty minutes of shifting and bit-back curses before they were close enough that she could push open the hatch and pull herself up onto the floor. The fresh air was a blessing - all that they'd had below had been choked with dust and the smell of the sea.

It was a brief respite, Natasha thought, but it didn't stop the burning underneath her skin.

*****

Clint waited below a little longer than was strictly necessary - ostensibly it was to give her enough room to climb out, but it was as much about waiting until he had his reaction to her under control. Not that she could have missed how hard he'd been while he was pressed up against her, but there hadn't been anything else he could've done given the circumstances. 

It was her scent that had undone him. He'd buried his face in her hair to muffle any sounds his breathing might make, and she'd mostly smelled like the ocean and the dusty blankets they were surrounded by, but there'd been an undertone of something else he couldn't get enough of. If she'd caught on to what he was doing, she hadn't said anything about it. 

Natasha was waiting at the table in the galley when he finally extricated himself.

"We should probably try to swim to shore before daylight."

Her voice was calm and even and he envied her her apparent composure.

"You're probably right. We'll still need to be on the look out for SHIELD's search teams."

"How tenacious are they apt to be?"

The look he gave her was incredulous. "Pretty damn tenacious. You're kind of on their top ten list right now. God only knows where I fall at this point." He knew what kind of resources SHIELD would come at them with, and he had no idea how they were going to survive it.

*****

When they finally pulled themselves out of the water, another mile down the coast and well away from any remaining SHIELD recon units, it was pouring down rain. By the time they reached the nearby city the fact that they were soaked to the skin didn't seem that out of place or unreasonable. It certainly wouldn't lead someone to think they'd been in the ocean just an hour or so before.

Natasha palmed the wallet of a business man they'd passed coming out of the red light district, and after taking the cash inside she'd discarded the rest. It wasn't much, but would buy them some food and something hot to drink while they took a few minutes to regroup and formulate a plan.

The waitress didn't even give them a sidelong glance for dripping on her floor. It was well after two in the morning and they only got the most cursory attention. It suited them both just fine. 

"We need to find a place to stay. SHIELD won't spend their resources focusing on the water and the beach for long."

"I don't suppose there's any chance they'll just give us up for dead?" 

"Not likely - I don't think Fury is going to underestimate you. Or me, for that matter. Coulson won't either, but he'd be more likely to look the other way."

"Is he... a friend of yours?" she finally asked, with an odd note in her voice that made him think it was a foreign idea to her. 

"I thought so. Hell, I guess he still is. He probably could've shot us both even with the tear gas. But I don't know anymore. He told me to kill you, he handed me the damn bow. I'm still pissed you made me leave it behind in the water, you know."

Natasha looked at him evenly with the best poker face he'd ever seen. "They're more likely to decide we died in the water if your weapon is found. I assume based on your behavior and reaction it's important to you."

"Something like that." He grimaced down at his coffee cup. "So, we still need a place to stay. And we don't have any resources to speak of, at least not that I have access to."

"I have access to mine."

"You mean the Red Room? What makes you think they're gonna react any better to this news than my people did?"

She took a breath, considered it. "They would not be pleased."

"Didn't think so."

"However," she continued, "I do have access to resources of my own."

******

The first of those resources turned out to be picking yet another pocket, this time of a business woman who was too preoccupied with her phone. Natasha was pleased to find enough money inside to get them a change of clothes and train tickets. 

She opted for a pair of jeans, sturdy boots, and a nondescript tee shirt and sweater, which put together made her look like any other young woman who might be backpacking across the continent. He chose similar attire, with a gray tee shirt and hooded sweatshirt since they couldn't afford a real coat. She tucked her hair up in under a dark blue scarf and tied it in a knot at the back of her head, and he adopted a plain black ball cap without a logo.

When they reached the station she bought three different sets of tickets, two in her new clothes and another while wearing his sweatshirt and with her hair uncovered in case SHIELD was able to access the surveillance photos. She didn't tell him which tickets she intended to use until they were on the platform about to board the train.

Once aboard, she sat in the seat beside him, very aware of his hand on the armrest - loose, open, and within easy reach but she couldn't accept the offer. It was a struggle not to wrap her arms around herself and draw her knees up - she had the urge to make herself as small as possible and shift as far away from him as she could. 

She wanted to touch him, too damn much. It felt like she was between two unyielding forces, both of which were trying to pull her apart. There was a feeling deep in her chest that being curled up in his arms might just be the safest place in the world, and she didn't know what to _do_ with that.

It was a lie, of course. The only place she'd ever felt anything approaching "safe" was when she was completely, blissfully alone. The small, rare moments when she wasn't being observed or ordered or directed by someone: she cherished those.

Her house in Bern was the culmination of those little slices of herself. No one else - not the Red Room, not SHIELD, _no one_ knew about it. She'd spent years putting accounts and identities in place to bury her trail before she'd even started looking for a location. She'd bought the house just two years ago and had visited only twice, when she'd been given deep cover assignments that necessitated a hands off approach from the Red Room's command.

It was the only place she could think to take him where they might be safe but she had no illusions that SHIELD wouldn't find them eventually. It was, at best, a short-term option.

Natasha glanced at his hand again. It was still there, available but not insistent. She looked at the lines, the bones and joints and the play of muscles as he shifted slightly in his seat.

She raised her head and realized he was watching her just as intently, almost like she was a puzzle he was trying to figure out.

"What's your name?" she found herself asking and was slightly surprised she'd spoken aloud. "Your full name, I mean - or is it just 'Barton'? I heard someone call you that."

His eyes widened and she might've described the look on his face as mild horror. It made her smile, just a little bit. 

"I... we never... well damn. Clint Barton. Sorry. God, this is so messed up." His hands moved as he reached up to run his fingers through his hair roughly.

"Clint," she said softly and watched as he smiled. "I assume my name and information was all in your files on me?"

"Natalia Alianova Romanov," he recited. She liked the way it sounded coming from him, except-

"Natasha. Not Natalia, that's not the name I use." 

"Natasha, then. Nice to meet you," he added, and held out his hand. 

She took it out of reflex, meaning to shake, but their skin met and their eyes locked and she felt like she was in free fall all over again.

The jolt of the train pulling into the next station and the booming voice over the loudspeaker announcing their arrival in Amsterdam broke the spell. She jerked her hand away and stood quickly, then carefully avoided any other contact as she followed him out of the car.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _"How do you do it?" he asked._
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> _"It?"_
> 
>  
> 
> _"Make someone believe they're bonded with you."_  
> 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See Chapter 1 for more notes.
> 
> For Anuna, because of all the reasons. :)
> 
> ALL THE HUGS for everyone who helped with this chapter - including (but possibly not limited to - and I'm REALLY sorry if I forget anyone): Anuna, SweetWaterSong, WorkerBee73, Ashen_Key, Sugar_Fey, Lar_Laughs, SidheRa, and Kadollan. Fandom (and fic) doesn't happen in a void, y'all and I love every single one of you!
> 
> This chapter was... difficult. That's a good word for it. Any errors are entirely my own.

_And is it worth the wait  
All this killing time?_

The platform was packed with midday commuters, and outside it wasn't much better. With a determined look on her face, Natasha headed up the street without really pausing to check for signs or directions. It was obvious she was familiar with the city and was headed someplace specific. Clint reached out and grabbed her arm. 

"Hang on a minute." He was touching the fabric of her sweater rather than her skin but even that contact made the pull stronger. She turned to face him and frowned. "Where are we going? I don't mind you calling the shots but I need to know what's going on so I'm prepared."

Foot traffic flowed around them, but every time he looked at her he kept getting the feeling they were the only two people in the world. She closed her eyes for just a second, breaking the connection. "I have a safe deposit box here. There are funds, cover identities, paperwork. Things we'll need in order to get away from your organization."

"Ok, I can work with that. Thank you," he added, almost as an afterthought, and let her go. 

They started walking again, and it was a few minutes before she added, "There's one problem, though." 

"What's that?"

"I only have paperwork for me. In order to get you out of the country, we'll have to get new documents."

"Well, hell. I don't suppose you would know where to go for that sort of thing?"

"I know people who can make them, and some of them owe me favors. It's just risky."

"Riskier than running from SHIELD?"

Anyone else would probably have missed the small hitch in her gait that belied her reaction. "Possibly."

"How much riskier?"

"Right now, we're only on the run from one organization. If I tap my contacts to get new documents, _my_ organization might very well hear about it. We'd have to fight on two fronts."

"And if we don't? We just have SHIELD to worry about? You don't think your people are starting to wonder where you are anyway?"

"They might be. I wasn't due to check in for another two days but when I don't, they'll start looking for me. This will just help them find me faster."

 _Damned if we do, damned if we don't,_ he thought to himself. "You know your people better than I do. It's up to you."

 

*****

There hadn't been any sign of them on the beach, and no reports of them in the city until Romanov had shown up on a security camera in a train station. Phil watched the footage three times. They'd been able to trace which tickets she'd bought with ridiculous ease - it had been easy enough that he knew she hadn't used them. He'd sent a team in that direction anyway, to cover his bases, but they wouldn't be headed to France.

Since he was alone in his quarters he allowed himself the luxury of pacing. Romanov would have fairly easy access to resources that would allow her to disappear. If they made it over one border, let alone several, their chances of disappearing for good went up exponentially. He wanted to let them. He'd been secretly thrilled when Clint pulled the stunt he had in the detention area, but Fury knew him too well, and knew what kind of leverage to use.

The path he was wearing in the floor ended with him standing in front of the small safe he kept his paperwork in. There were tickets inside, five of them, for each of her performances over the next month and a half. He'd hoped to be back in the States before her concert in Houston, but that didn't seem possible now. It had been months since he'd seen her. 

Fury could do what he'd threatened. Of that, Phil had no doubt. Clint was someone he considered a close friend, but Madeline... how could he risk never seeing her again?

Over the last five years he'd contemplated getting out too many times to count. He'd more than fulfilled his initial contract with SHIELD, now he remained because he loved the work, felt called to the duty of protecting the world. He was good at his job and he saved lives. As long as he held a job this dangerous, he knew he could never approach her and tell her who he really was and what he knew they were to one another. He wasn't sure if she'd have him even if he did considering he'd been lying to her the one time they'd met, but he could chance that. He wouldn't risk her life being tied to his while he deliberately put himself into the line of fire on a daily basis. 

So maybe it was time to remove himself from that fire. Maybe, when all this was over, he should hand over his badge and his gun and walk out on Fury and SHIELD and be done with all of it. Then he'd be free to seek her out, and get to know her and let her get to know the real him and find out where they could go from there. He'd never thought about doing anything else with his life, but... for her. Maybe.

But first he had to see this mission through to its end. The only way to keep Madeline would be to bring Barton and Romanov back in and betray a man he'd called friend.

*****

Natasha lied smoothly to the bank clerk who spoke to her like she was a regular customer there every week. Good customer service, to be sure, but it also implied they weren't paying that much attention to who was coming and going. It was probably one of the reasons she'd picked this place. That, and he could tell at a glance the security was shit. That was bad for most customers but excellent for her purposes because she had less chance of getting made. They were in and out in under twenty minutes with full wallet and a slim case he figured held IDs. Then it was a quick walk back to the low rent district by way of unmonitored back streets and alleys.

From the case she produced a key that let them into a small doorway that concealed a narrow staircase. At the top was a two-room apartment.

"It's temporary at best," she said as she led him inside. "I haven't been here in awhile, but there are some clothes in the bedroom and a bathroom attached so we can have hot showers."

"A shower would be good," he began but she was already headed into the bedroom and the door shut behind her. Seconds later he heard the water switch on. "Ladies first," he mumbled. He looked around the room. The kitchen was just a corner of the main room and was spartan. There wasn't a refrigerator that he could see, just a sink, a stove top and some cabinets - not even an oven. A quick glance in the cabinets showed a few dishes, a tea kettle and pot, but not food, not even canned or dry goods. The rest of the room wasn't much better; there was a table with two wooden chairs, a small bookcase with a paltry assortment of books, and a side table holding an ancient telephone. He sat gingerly on one of the chairs and picked up a battered copy of Great Expectations.

Clint was most of the way through the second chapter when she emerged with wet hair and new clothes: jeans again and a green blouse. He tried not to look too long at the way the blouse was clinging to her damp skin. 

"I don't know if anything in there will fit you," she said apologetically, "but the men's clothing is in the closet on the right and the bottom drawer of the bureau."

"That's fine. How's the hot water situation?"

"Decent. You should be able to manage ten or fifteen minutes without a problem. Towels are on the middle shelf."

He nodded and stepped into the other room. The place had obviously been meant for one agent at a time, or for a two-man surveillance team at best because the bed was a single. It was tucked off to one side and there was a desk and a computer that looked incongruous with the rest of the furniture. He checked the clothes and found a shirt he could live with. None of the pants were in his size, but his new jeans would be fine for a few more days if need be. 

The water was indeed still hot, a welcome relief after almost two days of being cold, and he was able to scrub the salt off his skin and out of his hair. 

She was sitting when he came back out, and the contents of the case were spread across the table. She looked up and stared, realized what she was doing and looked back down quickly. He moved to stand behind her so he could see what she was reading.

He didn't realize he'd set his hand on her shoulder or that his thumb was rubbing small circles against her skin until she stiffened.

"Sorry," he said softly and dropped his hand. "I didn't... it wasn't on purpose."

The silence that descended was heavy and awkward.

"So, we're going back out?"

"Yes. I'll need to pick up a phone and make some calls about getting you identification."

"How do you do it?" he asked after another long pause.

"It?"

"Make someone believe they're bonded with you."

"Afraid that I might be playing you? Setting all this up?"

He gave her a level look, thought back to how he'd felt all day. "Whatever this is, it's not fake. I _know_ that."

Natasha's mouth twisted in a wry expression that slid into a frown. "Well then. The first thing is to understand that most people _don't_ know that. They have assumptions about what bonding must be like. Depending on how important the idea is to them, they may have taken available information and ready examples - fictional, real, it doesn't matter - and they've created a sense in their mind of what it would be like.

"There are some aspects that are omnipresent. A reaction to skin-on-skin contact. Discomfort when separated that may or may not include real pain. An intense sexual experience following that initial connection."

Her tone was completely dry and professional, the same one she would probably use to catalog an arms locker, but the thought of that "intense sexual experience" had him hard as a rock in a second. Unaware or uncaring, she continued her answer.

"It's relatively simple to use a lotion laced with a mild skin irritant on your hands so that when you touch your mark they feel something else. Something extra. Rings that hold a very tiny charge add another level of sensation to that initial touch. That's more than enough for someone who's inclined to believe in such things, you just have to make sure you touch them before they touch you.

"After that, it's a matter of carefully administered doses of mild hallucinogens or irritants depending on the circumstances. The mark's own mind does the rest."

"Just like that."

"Just like that," she agreed with a small nod.

"And what happens after?"

She met his eyes with a long stare and her face was expressionless. "There is no after. They die."

*****

Natasha Romanov prided herself on many things.

She took pride in her skill as an operative, first and foremost. She knew, without a shadow of a doubt that she was one of the best in the world. She considered herself and excellent shot, a deft hand with poisons, an expert in hand to hand combat, and a brilliant tactician. She was a master at her craft and the manipulation of other people.

She knew that all those skills came from rigid self-control and discipline. It was a point of pride that she could remain completely calm and unphased no matter what a mission or situation threw at her. She did _not_ allow her own wants or needs to interfere with her job. She ignored pain, could and did work through uncomfortable conditions, and didn't let herself become distracted or confused by outside influences.

Sex had _certainly_ never been an issue. She could count on one hand the number of people she'd had a physical relationship with outside of mission parameters, and in none of those cases had anyone been overwhelmed with emotions or physical attraction. 

All he'd done was set his hand on her shoulder. Nothing about that simple touch should have scrambled her nerves and responses so thoroughly but it had. She'd wanted to reach up and hold onto him, to pin his hand in place so he would keep doing exactly what he was doing, just those maddening little circles, light and ghosting along her skin.

She didn't lose control and she didn't get confused and right now she was certainly the later and dangerously close to the former. She was hyper-aware of his presence just behind her as they left the apartment and wound their way through the crowds on the street. Staying in heavily populated areas was smart, it gave them more cover and gave anyone trying to find them that much less maneuverability, but it also meant being pushed and jostled, often right into one another, which wasn't helping.

It was making it difficult to think through her plan. She knew of two forgers in the area that could make convincing documents as quickly as they would need them. Both of them worked for lower level _mafiya bratva_ that had contracted with the Red Room on multiple occasions. It was a fifty-fifty chance whether or not they'd hear about it. She might be able to get Clint over the border without paperwork, but there were no guarantees there either.

"Hey." His hand on her shoulder startled her out of her thoughts and she cursed inwardly for letting herself get so distracted. "You okay?"

Hysterical laughter threatened to bubble up. No, she was certainly _not_ "okay", as he put it. Instead of telling him that, she reminded him they ought to find dinner while they were out.

******

They bought bread and cheese from a market and then found an out of the way corner down a side street to stop and eat. He watched with curiosity as she spent more time systematically tearing the bread up into pieces than actually eating it and tried to figure out what was going on in her head.

"Are you one of those people?" she finally asked. She did a good job of keeping her voice neutral but he thought the fact she wouldn't look up at him indicated something more to the question.

"One of which people?"

She did look up then, and he wondered if she was good enough to read him even behind the sunglasses he'd donned.

"The type of person who fantasizes about bonding. One of the ones who wants it. Is that why you didn't shoot me?"

"Which time?"

Natasha looked confused - just for a second - by the question. 

"Which time that I didn't shoot you?" he clarified. "I didn't shoot you on the rooftop, and I didn't shoot you again on the Carrier when I broke you out of hack."

"Fine then. The first time."

"Why didn't you shoot me?"

She was getting annoyed, he could tell. He was watching her closely enough to catch the tension around her eyes and mouth.

"I'm not 'one of those people'. I didn't even really believe in it, I guess. I believed that other people believed, but not - I thought it was their imagination or something." The rest of his makeshift sandwich suddenly seemed tasteless and he chucked it into a nearby bin. "Then I saw you, and I had this gut feeling, the kind you don't ignore. I didn't know what was going on, just that I needed to talk to you. Then we touched."

"And the second time? I assume you weren't - aren't ready to die?"

He shook his head ruefully. "Yeah, I wasn't really thinking about that part. There was just no way in hell I was gonna kill you."

"Completely selfless then? No sense of your own preservation?"

"That was probably the dumbest move I've ever made, trying to take people out with tear gas from that close up. That said, it wasn't selfless. Not in the least." The look he gave her was dark and significant.

She let the silence stretched just to the point of being awkward before she abruptly started walking towards the street entrance. He caught up but she didn't turn around, and when she stopped suddenly to keep from being run over by a car zipping by he ran into her and grabbed her arms to steady them both.

They wandered a bit until they found a strip of tiny shops. There was a shady looking electronics store and two doors down someone was selling what he imagined were jackets made of imitation leather, but would be warmer than what he was wearing. She'd given him a stack of money at the bank and he was tired of being cold. Tapping on her shoulder, he indicated the other store and she nodded absently without breaking off her haggling with the salesman.

He'd just finished his purchase and was shrugging his new jacket on when he heard the commotion behind him.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _He was grudgingly beginning to accept there might be something beyond them at work, something he had no grasp of and had never wanted to try to understand._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See Chapter 1 for more notes.
> 
> HUGS and _many_ thanks (and cookies) for: Anuna, SweetWaterSong, Sugar_Fey, Lar_Laughs, SidheRa, and Kadollan.

He was turning to see what the problem was when she was suddenly at his side, taking his arm in a steel grip and guiding him briskly but calmly away from the storefront.

"Don't turn around, just keep walking," she hissed when he started to look back. Behind them he could hear a woman shouting and a man cursing roundly in a language he wasn't familiar with.

Clint fell into step beside her and she eased off their forward momentum but kept her hand on his arm. "What happened?"

"I almost ran into an old... acquaintance," she said, frowning. "I created a distraction. I don't think he recognized me, but-"

He heard the rapid footsteps behind them at the same time she did. He couldn't resist looking back and saw three men in dark coats roughly pushing their way through the crowd.

"Apparently he did," Clint finished and looked around. Up ahead was an intersection, the kind meant more for foot traffic than cars. It was surrounded by bars and cafes, several of which stood slightly off from one another with narrow alleyways in between.

"Here, in here," he said and pushed her down the nearest side street. It was a dead end and he cursed under his breath. He crowded her into the doorway, effectively hiding them from view of the street, thankful the jacket he'd chosen was black. The narrow space did odd things with the acoustics, but after a minute he heard people scuffling behind him and voices in that same unfamiliar language. He felt her tense against him and knew she recognized it. 

He could feel her heart beating against his chest just below his own, could also feel how shallow her breathing was as they both waited, waited, waited.

 _Not yet, not yet, don't move yet_ echoed in each beat and reluctant breath.

Time stretched out forever, and it wasn't just the wait to see if they were about to be discovered, it was how close they were pressed, and how very insubstantial their clothing suddenly felt as a shield. 

He forced himself to count backwards from two hundred before he finally pushed away from the wall and dared to look over his shoulder toward the street.

Nothing. No one.

Crisis averted, again. He felt like he could almost see the reserves of their luck dwindling down into oblivion.

Even though he'd made space between them, they were still brushing against one another with every inhalation and shifting movement. Her hands had come up against his chest when he'd entered her space but she hadn't attempted to push him away. His stayed braced against the door behind her so that she was still caged between him and the wall.

He looked down and met her eyes in the shadows, and the rest of the world fell away. 

*****

Natasha's heart was racing. She'd seen Mikhail and Dominic before they'd seen her, but only by seconds - just enough time for her to "stumble" into a nearby shopper so that he collided with another woman and started a shouting match between the two, even as she was ducking around them towards Clint.

She'd been surprised when he'd drug her into the alley and crowded her into a doorway, but she hadn't protested. It was a new sensation, being sheltered and hidden. Knowing that he was putting himself between her and a possible threat - just one more thing to add to the list of experiences she was trying to understand. She could hear him mumbling numbers against her hair and let her awareness narrow down to just him. The way he felt, the way he smelled, the sounds of his voice and heart beat. His chest was hard and broad beneath her palms and she wanted to run her hands up until they were around his neck, fingers in his hair.

He started to move away and she caught her protest before it left her throat. She knew they were safe when she felt his shoulders shift and relax slightly. Then he looked back down at her and she locked her eyes to his.

Slowly, so slowly it was almost painful, he lowered his head until his lips barely brushed across hers. Just that, the briefest contact, but the sense of relief and _want_ that flooded through her made her knees give way. He caught her before she could fall, and she found herself more thoroughly pinned against the door than she had been moments ago. The second kiss wasn't hesitant or tentative at all, and she felt more than heard him make a strangled sound against her mouth when she opened for him. 

There was too much heat and not enough pressure and certainly not enough air, she was dizzy from the lack of it. Or dizzy because of _him_ , she wasn't sure which. He tasted like coffee and darkness and that wasn't the kind of thing she ever thought about when she kissed someone. His hair was rough under her fingers where she cradled his head between her hands, and she didn't think about that kind of thing, either. 

"God," he hissed, breaking away from the kiss for a second, and she realized she was trying to twine one of her legs around his to bring him closer. He was hard against the cradle of her hips and every movement either of them made was making them both shudder. 

"Please..." she trailed off, unable to finish the thought because she had no idea what she was asking for. He buried his face against the side of her neck and she held him there, feeling his lips and his ragged breath against her skin while he tried to regain some control.

"Not the time or place," he finally said, and it was laced with regret. 

"No," she agreed, and he pulled away, slowly, as if every movement hurt. 

"I think they're gone." 

"Probably. For now." He stepped away from her completely then, and she forced herself not to follow or attempt to keep in contact with him.

"Who were they?"

"Two of them were Mikhail Korsokov and Dominic Ivanov. I didn't recognize the third. They work for a mid-level drug operation in northern and eastern Europe."

"I take it you have some history there?"

"A bit. I killed their boss last year. They weren't too pleased about that, even if it was his son who ordered the hit." She watched his face carefully for some kind of reaction, disgust maybe, or disbelief. He gave her neither, just a nod of understanding. 

"Did you get what you needed back there?" 

His questions forced her to return to the present and their situation. "Yes," she pulled two cell phones out of her pocket and handed him one. "These should do for now. I'll call DeLuc about the papers and get the payment and pick up instructions. With any luck, we should be able to leave by this time tomorrow."

*****

Things were strained between them by the time they got back to the apartment. She was making sure not to touch him inadvertently, and wasn't making eye contact, either. 

"Natasha," he started, but she turned away and slipped into the bedroom, shutting the door behind her. He heard the sound of the lock, and resisted the urge to try the knob.

She'd looked even more unsettled after their kiss than he'd felt, if that was even possible. On the carrier, she'd told him she thought death was preferable to being bound to someone like this. 

What did he think?

Clint sank down onto the floor with his back to her door and rested his elbows on his knees as he raked his fingers through his hair. 

He'd had relationships before, and a couple of those times he'd thought he was in love. In high school, when it had been all about teenage hormones and a kind of hopeful longing, then many years later, right after he'd joined SHIELD. That had been a more grown-up kind of love that made a man contemplate changing his lifestyle and clearing out half his closet. 

It was nothing like this.

Which didn't make any sense, and made him take a long, hard look now that he had a little bit of breathing space. The adrenaline had faded, they were locked in and had a plan, and while there were plenty of people out there who wanted to kill them, he had a reasonable certainty they weren't going to show up tonight. Given the look in her eyes, he doubted that Natasha was going to come back out (he briefly wondered if she would unlock the door at some point to give him access to the bathroom), so he had nothing to do but think.

He'd been fascinated with her file from the moment he opened it. Her record was impressive. Seeing her in person once he started surveillance on her proved even more impressive. When he'd seen her up close, he'd been able to appreciate that she was beautiful, but he'd seen plenty of beautiful women. It hadn't been until he'd touched her that everything had gotten turned inside out. 

That wasn't quite right. There'd been that sense of knowing he shouldn't kill her. That had been odd. Not unheard of, he'd had it before, but still out of the ordinary. His gut knew she was going to be important to him, somehow.

He had a few options, a few ways to look at it. First, that this was some kind of shared fugue state. They were losing their minds, either by chance or by design. If it was by design, either she was manipulating him, or some other third party was manipulating them both. That had a wide open range of options to chose from. 

But.

If it were her doing, if this thing between them was all some kind of elaborate con, then wouldn't she have touched him first? That's what she'd described after all. Not that she couldn't be lying, but he'd approached _her_ , not the other way around. So that was unlikely.

On the entirely other hand, they might _not_ be crazy at all. That option opened up ideas he wasn't sure he was comfortable with and he rubbed a hand over his eyes. He was grudgingly beginning to accept there might be something beyond them at work, something he had no grasp of and had never wanted to try to understand.

Clint stretched out on the floor and balled his coat up under his head to serve as a pillow. They were as safe as they were going to get for the time being, and he might as well take advantage of it and get some rest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Interlude: Dutiful Daughter](http://archiveofourown.org/works/539663) was originally posted between Chapters 5 and 6.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _All damn day, she'd kept him at arm's length without any contact between them and he felt like he wanted to crawl out of his skin._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See Chapter 1 for more notes.
> 
> Thanks to SweetWaterSong, Anuna, Kadollan, and SidheRa for the beta-ing. :D
> 
> [Interlude: Dutiful Daughter](http://archiveofourown.org/works/539663) was originally posted between Chapters 5 and 6.

Phil tweaked the latest report from his team in Paris, added a paragraph implying someone had seen a woman matching Romanov's description on the eastern side of the city, and then flagged it directly to Fury's desktop. It would give him at least an extra half a day.

He'd watched the train station tapes so many times he could see the movement and faded colors when he closed his eyes, and he was fairly sure he'd identified two other purchases that might've been the enemy agent. There was still no sign of Barton, but they had to be together. One set had been cross-checked and showed passage to Brussels, the other to Amsterdam. They'd go local for now, he suspected. She could probably get him over the border without paperwork, but she didn't seem the type that liked leaving something up to so many variables. They could blend into the capital for awhile, get some resources lined up, and _then_ try to get out of the country.

But he was leaving all that out of his reports. For now.

Once he'd gotten past the initial chill of fear at Fury's threat, he'd gone into the mode he knew best, analyzing the situation, looking at the facts, and he'd come to some equally chilling conclusions.

Fact: Barton seemed to have a bond with the Russian agent and assassin, code-named "Black Widow"

Fact: She'd come in willingly, without attempting to evade any kind of capture or escape.

Fact: Despite no immediate threat to SHIELD, or any directly insubordinate behavior on Barton's part, Fury had ordered the termination of a potentially valuable asset before any kind of intel could be gathered, thus leading Barton to break from SHIELD, take the prisoner, and run.

It was irrational.

It wasn't in anyone's best interests to play the cards that way - _least_ of all SHIELD's. If Barton's loyalty had been in question, there were much less severe ways that could've been dealt with, both short term and long term. 

Conclusion: For some reason, Fury was making irrational decisions, which put his ability to function as Director of SHIELD very seriously into question.

But if he tried to do anything about it, Fury would follow through with his threat, of that Phil had no doubt. What he needed was some kind of leverage, something he could push back with. 

For the first time in his life, Phil Coulson was contemplating what amounted to treason. It sat like a lead weight in the pit of his stomach, holding him down, making it difficult for him to act. He needed information first, then he could better determine a plan of action... and at the same time he needed to continue to stall and keep the rest of SHIELD off of Barton and Romanov's tail.

*****

All day.

All damn day, she'd kept him at arm's length without any contact between them and he felt like he wanted to crawl out of his skin. Or something.

It had been a day of doing remarkably little other than waiting around for the forger to finish his work. The pick-up had been at an open-air market full of people just getting off work and doing a little shopping before heading home. It had been easy to blend in with them, and even easier to slip one envelope under a basket of apples and pick up another from beneath a display of bread. He'd spent the whole day with his attention split between an awareness of her and her subtle but unmistakable signs of avoidance, and keeping an eye on their surroundings to gauge potential threats.

Then she'd all but begged him to go back upstairs to the apartment while she stayed at the cafe downstairs. The unsettled look was back in her eyes, tearing at him because he had no idea how to make it go away. What could he do, but agree? So he'd gone to the apartment alone and tried (failed) to read.

Finally, the door closed behind her as she returned. Silence stretched out between them and his head was pounding from the last three hours of separation. Without even so much as a "hello", he reached out and grabbed her wrist, then pulled her in close so that her head fit against his shoulder. Her hands came up against his arms but she didn't try to push him away. "Barton, what-"

"Just a minute. God, I need this, for just a minute," he managed. He felt hyper-aware of her. As soon as his bare hand had touched her skin he'd felt the tension start to loosen. His other hand was tangled in her hair and he buried his face against it so that he could breathe her in.

It was insane, a lone, logical part of his brain reminded him. It was crazy to need her so _badly_ after such a short time. That part of his mind was watching with dismay that edged into horror at what was happening and had a keen awareness of how this might all play out. There wasn't a good solution here, he knew that.

But for just a minute, holding her close, he felt like as long as he had this, had _her_ it would all be okay. 

"This can't fix anything," she muttered and he realized he must've said part of what he'd been thinking out loud. Reluctantly he dropped his hands, gave her room to step away from him and she did.

"It's just going to make things more difficult," she continued as she crossed the room and busied herself at the small sink, filling a glass with water and drinking it down.

"They're already pretty difficult. And being joined at the hip isn't really helping matters."

She shot him a dark look over her shoulder. "We could take care of that part of the problem, at least."

He'd been reaching for his book but froze at her words. "Excuse me?"

"This pull. This liability," she gestured between the two of them, "it's only temporary."

Understanding dawned on his face as what she was suggesting began to sink in. "It's a mechanism to pull us together. To make us want to seal the bond through sex."

"And once the bond is set, these side effects go away. No more draw, no more distraction."

"They say you don't ever want to be with anyone else, afterward."

Her eyes narrowed. "I didn't want to be with anyone in the first place, so that's hardly a loss for me."

He was surprised. "No one? Seriously?" 

"Not really, no. Dating and commitment don't really come up in my line of work. Would it bother you?"

He bit back his reply - his instinct was to shout at her, _yes of course it would bother him._ Of course he hadn't deliberately contemplated spending his life alone. On the other hand, he knew good and well he hadn't contemplated spending his life _with_ anyone, either.

"It wouldn't be that much of a change, I guess." It was the best answer he could manage for her, but his gut twisted at the idea of doing anything for convenience's sake.

"Then why don't we get it over with?"

"Have sex? Just like that?"

"Yes. We release the tension that's been building up, dissipate the effects of the bonding process, and then we can go our separate ways."

"You know I can't go back to SHIELD, right? And when they find me, they're liable to execute me? You'll still die if and when I die, babe - whether or not we're in the same area code."

"It's a risk we'll have to both take. I can teach you how to stay hidden." She took a few very deliberate steps toward him and he could feel the pull, her gravity drawing him in, urging him to move closer.

"And what if we do this," he was close enough now, and his fingers reached out and traced over her cheek before slipping around to the back of her head, "and I decide I can't let you go?"

His mouth hovered over hers. "It's a two-way street, Natasha," his voice was low as he looked into her eyes. "This isn't just about you. It's about both of us. That's the point. What if I'm not prepared to just let you walk out of my life once it's done?"

 _What if I'm not prepared to let you walk out of my life, now?_ was on his lips, sat uneasily in the pit of his stomach, but he didn't dare say it out loud. 

Her eyes were wide, but it was her only visible reaction. His free hand went to the small of her back to bring their bodies together and he made sure she could feel his hardness pressing against her. He watched, pleased when he saw her eyes dilate to match his own. He knew all kinds of statistics about how adrenaline and shared experience heightened emotions and made you feel things - but that wasn't it, or not all of it. She'd impressed the hell out of him, over and over again, even in the short time they'd been together. She was brilliant, strong, capable, and deadly. She was proving herself to be all the things he hadn't even realized he'd been looking for in a partner.

"I have to go back. You can't follow me, they'll kill you, too. Whether or not you want to let me go? It's irrelevant. There's no way to end this like a fairy tale and you know that. If you don't, learn it. Quickly." Despite the desire in her eyes and the way she kept stealing glances at his mouth, her tone was coldly practical. "But if I go back before we resolve this thing between us, they'll kill us anyway. I can't do my job with you tagging along like a lovesick child, or curled up on my knees because we're too far apart."

Time spun out between them, as they each waited for the other to make the next move. Her patience seemed to break first, and in a rush of movement she closed the gap between them and pressed her lips against his.

The shock of it went straight down his spine and he nudged, felt her open her mouth under his so he could slip in and take what he wanted. He didn't realize he'd backed her across the room until he felt her hips hit the counter and he easily boosted her up onto the edge and she wrapped her legs around his waist. It brought them even closer together and he could feel her hot against him and her fingers digging into his arms.

It was fever and fire running through his blood stream. He could drown here, in this sensation, in _her_ , and god, he wanted to. He could feel the shift of her muscles beneath his hands, hear the small, urgent sounds she was making, taste hints of chocolate and tea as he explored her mouth. The last kiss had caught him off guard and he'd been too overwhelmed, still riding too much of an adrenaline high from the chase to properly appreciate it. Now he took his time, let himself enjoy it, let go just a little bit.

The need for air caused him to break the kiss and rest his forehead against hers while his hands still moved along her thighs and hips, up her back and then down again. Raising his head, he took a moment to take her in, then met her eyes. 

She looked... resigned. Distant. Maybe even a little calculating, and it was like she'd slipped on some kind of mask. Behind it, he could see how much effort she was putting into trying to remain in control of herself and what was going on. He'd seen that look on her face before, through a scope when he'd watched her work, and with a sinking feeling he realized two things.

First, she was right. This would have to happen, sooner rather than later, if they were going to survive. It was too strong, and too distracting, it turned them into each other's greatest liability, one they could not afford. He'd been gone just a minute before, so caught up in her that someone could've come into the room, come right up behind him and he wouldn't have noticed them until it was too late.

But second, and more importantly, while he might be able to accept that it had to happen, it wasn't going to happen tonight.

He untangled himself from her arms and legs and stepped backwards. "I'm not doing this. Not like this, not tonight. Maybe you're right, and it's inevitable and maybe it would be better to just rip off the bandage and get it over with, but right now, I can't." 

She opened her mouth to protest, but he cut her off with a look. Angry, exhausted, and still feeling raw from the day, he stormed across the room, jerked open the bedroom door and went inside, making sure to lock it behind him. If nothing else, he decided, he'd at least get some damn sleep.

*****

He'd locked her out, and Natasha supposed she deserved that, particularly since she'd done the same thing to him the night before. She thought seriously about going for a walk, but the idea of going through another few hours like she'd spent at the cafe seemed beyond her. 

She'd thought maybe... she had training. She knew how to endure any number of things, had been taught to withstand multiple forms of torture, general pain and fatigue, had even been able to successfully put several severely broken ribs and internal injuries out of her mind while in the middle of a crucial stage of a mission. She didn't fear pain, was entirely used to it, but this? This wasn't just pain. The pain itself wasn't even that severe. 

It was the _wanting_ that was tearing her up inside. She had no idea how to handle wanting something so much, and wondered if this was akin to how addicts felt about their drugs? If anyone in the Red Room had seen her performance these last few days she'd already have a bullet in her skull (at best), or be reprogrammed (at worst). It was absolutely unacceptable to have this level of distraction. So she'd told herself that she could build up the strength, the resistance to do this, to fight it and she'd insisted on remaining in the cafe alone and had withstood it as long as she could. Only three hours, then she'd run back upstairs and straight into his arms because that made the unbearable tension go away. 

She didn't want to live like this. Couldn't live like this, and it was within their power to stop it. It didn't matter to her if she was never interested in anyone else, she wasn't allowed to be in the first place. She could (and did) do her job without interest all the time and the Red Room certainly didn't allow for a personal life. Her daydreams of someday running away were entirely based on the idea of being _alone_ so she wasn't losing anything by bonding with him. Assuming he would be willing to let her go. If not, she could probably run from him, hide. She was confident she could hide from the Red Room and without SHIELD he didn't have anything like their resources. Or... she could take him with her, for awhile. Hide him someplace for a few years so he would be safe while she finished extracting herself. She could still go back to the Red Room, claim that SHIELD had tried to capture her and she'd escaped. If he could provide her with information, she could even present that to her superiors and gain herself some room to maneuverer while she finished planning her end game.

First though, she'd need to convince him to go through with it. They'd been so close, then he'd turned and she still wasn't entirely sure what she'd done wrong. He'd seen something on her face that he hadn't liked, she knew that much. 

Gingerly, quietly, she went over to the door and tried the knob, even though she knew it was locked, then rested her head against the smooth wood. They would head east in the morning and leave Amsterdam behind. She was glad to be going and to put more distance between them and SHIELD. Her rendezvous point with her handler should've been in Kiev, but she could arrange for an alternate site once she had Clint hidden. Maybe by then she could figure out a way to overcome his resistance to the idea of finishing things. A small voice in the back of her mind asked her why she didn't just take her chances and kill him now, before things became irrevocable, but it sounded too much like her trainers and she ruthlessly shoved it down.

She wouldn't kill him. She _couldn't_ kill him, anymore than he could've killed her.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _"Which brings me to my next question: where are we planning to go?"_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See Chapter 1 for more notes.
> 
> So... this one is long (actually the longest chapter yet). O.O
> 
> One important point to note - while I've been to Europe once, years and years ago, it was as part of a school group. I've never driven over there, nor do I have any experience with how border crossings work now that the EU is in place or if you're an individual versus a big group on a tour bus. So... if I've gotten any of those details wrong, my apologies! I will freely admit to Deus ex Machina and the activation of convenient plot devices.
> 
> Thank you to Anuna and SweetWaterSong for beta-ing and general cheerleading! And thank you to everyone who's left such awesome feedback! I really <3 the discussions and to know what you think about it. :D

She was screaming. He could hear her, but he couldn't find her. It was all shadows and hallways, and her voice ricocheting off the walls all around him. But no way to get to her.

*****

Clint woke with a start, adrenaline running through his veins and his heart racing.

The screams were real.

He was out of the bed like a shot, cursing the precious seconds it took to unlock the door.

She'd managed to back herself into the corner of the room and was sitting upright, curled over her drawn up knees and shaking. The screams had stopped somewhere between the bed and the living room.

"Natasha?" his voice was rough and deep with sleep and she flinched. Froze.

"Clint?" she asked, hesitant and soft. It didn't sound like her at all.

"Yeah. You... were screaming."

He saw her take a deep breath, watched her shoulders rise and fall three times before she looked up.

"I had a nightmare."

Just like that, her self-control was back. She sounded like he'd just asked her if she'd like a cup of coffee or a sandwich rather than like someone who'd just been screaming bloody murder a minute ago.

"That was a helluva nightmare," he managed, but she didn't respond. Finally, slowly, she uncurled and stood. She tried to step around him, but his hand reached out to brace against the wall in front of her, keeping her in the corner space. 

"Natasha. Talk to me. What was it?"

"I had a bad dream, Barton. It's really nothing. Not all my memories are pretty ones." 

He didn't think about, just reached out with his free hand to cup her jaw and stroke his thumb across her cheek. "Natasha," he said it softly, beseechingly, and gently turned her face up to his. Her voice might've been under control but her eyes were still haunted and he found he wanted nothing more than to hunt down whatever dragons were causing it and slay them for her, never mind that she was perfectly capable of slaying dragons herself.

Her arms were wrapped around her stomach like she was trying to hold herself together, but with every brush of his thumb across her skin she relaxed a little more. She reached out, and her hand settled at his waist, causing him to shudder. The pull was getting stronger - now even through the fabric of his shirt he reacted to her. She drew her fingers back and forth lightly as if taking in the texture.

The air felt hushed and still, as if all the excess energy had gone up in a flashpoint, leaving only the steady hum of the bond. 

"Missions sometimes fail. Extractions sometimes don't go smoothly." She fell silent again and he realized that was as much of an explanation as she was willing to offer. It wasn't an unfamiliar concept for him, he'd had a few of those nightmares himself.

His fingers slid deeper into her hair and tilted her head up towards his. He mustered every ounce of self control he had, and pressed his mouth against her temple in a remarkably chaste kiss, just resting there and trying to say without any words everything that was running through his head. He wanted to say "I'm here, I won't let anything happen to you, I'll protect you, I can catch you if you fall" but those weren't the words she needed and she wouldn't want them even if she did. She didn't need protecting (except that everyone sometimes needed protecting). 

It was her turn to shudder, though she did it less visibly than he had, and her hand stilled at his waist. He could feel her breath on his neck and the warmth of her body this close to his. Reluctantly he pulled away, let his arm drop from the wall and stepped backwards. "Take the bed," he offered. "Get some sleep. In the morning we need to make a plan to get out of here."

Wordlessly, she headed for the bedroom door, but when she reached it, she stopped and looked back at him for a long moment before proceeding.

She closed the door behind her, but he didn't hear the lock.

*****

Lights shone through the window and made shapes on the floor. Natasha lay stiffly on the bed for a long time, willing sleep to come back, but was getting nowhere. 

It had been a bad one, one of her worst. One of her oldest, about cold rooms and bloody floors and stern voices super-imposed over the sound of guns and screaming. She couldn't really remember being that young, just that things had been better, later: better beds, better clothes, heat and water. Enough food to eat, because what good was a trainee that was too malnourished to run or jump, fight or kill? They'd taken very good care of their girls, so long as they did what they were told, when and how they were told to do it. No matter how unconscionable it might be.

Of course there had been missions, later, that hadn't gone as planned. She hadn't lied, or not entirely (and even as she thought that, she had a hot flare of guilt in her stomach that she wasn't accustomed to). There had even been nights those missions _had_ been the subject of her nightmares, but those were never the ones that she woke from screaming. Those just ached in her psyche like a slowly healing bruise, leaving her emotions slightly tender upon waking. 

She could still feel his lips against her skin and resisted the urge to reach up and touch her face where he'd kissed her. He was leaving her emotions more than slightly bruised, she decided. It had been new, and different, and she couldn't remember ever having had anyone touch her like that, to comfort her. He'd wanted to do so much more, she could tell, she knew these things about men - knew when they were attracted and aroused, not that Clint ( _that Barton_ , she corrected herself) was making any secret of it anyway. She also knew how powerful the pull was, how she'd felt compelled to touch his skin, to seek out that contact. Yet all he'd done was that chaste kiss, comforting, not arousing, giving, not demanding. 

What the hell was she supposed to do with that?

Rolling over, she adjusted the pillow under her head and stared at the door instead of the window, and wondered how this was ever going to end.

*****

It was the pull that woke her, an overwhelming restlessness that pulled her out of sleep and out of the bed. That itchy, tense sensation that told her he was too far away and compelled her to find him drew her out into the living/dining room, but he was no where to be seen.

Her gun was still on the table where she'd left it and she picked it up, clicking off the safety. She heard the footsteps in the hall about the same time that the tension slackened. Natasha left the gun trained on the door while she listened to the key fit the lock and watched the door handle turn.

When Clint, and only Clint, entered the room and shut the door behind him, she finally let her arm drop.

He'd noticed the gun, she'd seen how his movements had turned slow and deliberate, telegraphing everything he was about to do so there were no surprises. Slowly he set the bag he was holding down onto the table along with the two cups and a handful of what looked like maps and raised his hands so she could see them. 

"Just me," he said, "I went to grab breakfast and coffee. I didn't think I'd be gone so long, but there was a line at the cafe."

She reset the safety and set her gun back down onto the table.

"It woke me up," she blurted out before she could stop herself. 

He nodded. "Yeah, I felt it kick in and I wondered. I should've left a note."

"It's fine."

He held out one of the cups of coffee and she took it, took a long drink even though it was still hot, hoping the combination of heat and caffeine would clear the rest of the lingering disorientation from her system.

"I also got some maps. The train lines, along with a road map, in case we want to try and steal a car instead of rail travel." As she looked on, he started unfolding and spreading out the maps, studying them. One showed most of Western Europe. He set that one on top and took out a pen. "Ok. There are SHIELD facilities - either major or satellite installations - here, here... here and here," Clint circled several cities across most of the countries shown. "Those are the ones I know about. I can't promise there aren't more, but it'll have to do. Of the available train lines," he pulled out one of the other maps and laid it over the first, "none of them bypass all the major SHIELD installations. So, that's still an option, but extremely risky. SHIELD will have all those stations on alert, and can patch into their facial recognition software no problem. They probably already have."

"That leaves us with the car option," she offered, reaching for the bag he'd brought and looking inside. Pleased with what she found, she pulled out one of the fresh croissants and tore off a bite.

"It's doable, and it would give us the flexibility to avoid as many of these locations as we can. Which brings me to my next question: where are we planning to go?"

She paused in her systematic deconstruction of the pastry. "Like I said, I still need to check in with my people. If I tell them I was detained by SHIELD, but that I escaped, that might buy us some time. It would put them on our side, at least superficially. As long as they think I'm still their operative, I have access to their resources."

"I can't go with you." A statement of fact, but perhaps also of intent - he wasn't planning to defect, she supposed, and she didn't even blame him. He'd seen the reports, he knew the kind of businesses that the Red Room dealt in. 

"No. They don't really bring in free agents on contract."

"Which still begs the question, how do we do this? Because right now, I can't very well _not_ go with you. It's getting worse - I was only gone for half an hour this morning."

"I've... been thinking about that," Natasha admitted. She stared into her coffee rather than looking up at him. "I still say our best strategy is to get rid of the pull. The sooner we get it over with, the more easily we'll be able to maneuver. Once that's done, I can contact my people, go back in. I've..." it was perhaps the hardest thing to say, what she was about to admit - it was something she'd never said to anyone else. "I have a house. A plan. I wasn't going to stay with the Red Room forever, I've been planning to - run away, I suppose you'd call it. You can't just quit, of course."

He cocked his head to the side. "In for life, huh?"

"It's the only life I've ever known. It's the only life I'm ever supposed to know. I know of two others who've tried to leave. It didn't end well for them."

"But you've been planning it."

She nodded. "All I want, all I've ever wanted, is to be alone. Free."

Admitting it, maybe especially to him, left her shaky inside, her childish dreams brought out into the light unprotected. She'd felt a similar feeling the day she'd bought the house, when she'd turned the key in the lock and stepped inside.

"And the Red Room doesn't know about the house?"

She shook her head. "No. I've been careful, and I'm very good at what I do. I'm sure they don't. Or, as sure as I can be." It was the best answer she could give. She had taken every possible precaution, but there was a always the chance with them. 

"So now we just have to boost a car."

"Boost?"

*****

When the woman approached his table, Phil stood up and offered his hand. He gave her his courteous "on the job" smile - she recognized it. (And of course she did - how long had she known him?)

"Thank you for coming," he said as she took his hand and shook it, brief and friendly. Just two friends meeting for coffee, except it was hardly that, she could already tell. "You look good. The E-Division has been good to you."

"Amazing what a promotion will do, right?" she agreed amicably, but couldn't quite keep the tension out of her voice and eyes. She'd never been as good at undercover work as others. No, she'd excelled at combat and computer skills more than acting and mind games.

"Amazing," he echoed, and then she knew something was wrong. The cafe was as much neutral ground as they could make it. She'd already been off the carrier on a week-long leave and she knew Phil would've taken precautions about being followed. 

"Have you heard about what happened?" he asked, getting down to business. 

A curl of fear formed in the pit of her stomach. "No."

A waiter came over and she ordered a coffee, but waved away the menu. She suddenly wasn't in any mood to eat.

"Barton's been compromised." Phil said it calmly, matter of factly, but she knew immediately it had to be _wrong_.

"Bullshit," she said flatly, and narrowed her eyes. "No way in hell."

"According to Fury," he amended, and yes, there was fear there. Even Phil's cool facade was cracking a bit and that scared her more than his words.

"You can't tell me what happened?"

"No. Not... not if I can help it. The less you know the better." _The safer for you,_ remained unspoken but understood. "I have a favor to ask, and you can say no."

"What do you need?" There were only a handful of people she cared about and considered "hers" and both of them were on that list.

"I don't think Fury is making rational decisions anymore. But I need to know more before I can do anything about it."

"'Do anything about it?' -- What do you think you _could_ do about it? We're talking about the Director of SHIELD."

"He's become irrational. Look. Barton brought in a potential asset, a potential informant on a major player on the world stage, instead of terminating her. There's more to it I can't tell you about right now, but the core of it is, Fury decided that his loyalty was compromised and ordered him to kill her. Without interrogating her, finding out what she wanted - anything. Instead Barton broke her out of holding and they escaped. I'm supposed to be out there _right now_ hunting them both down. Orders are to kill them both on sight."

"What had she done?"

"We were following her in connection with several mid-level assassinations. She's a Red Room operative, and yes, they're dangerous. She'd been working a job that was counter to our interests and Barton was sent to take her out, but she didn't attack him when she had the chance, and came in voluntarily, for all intents and purposes."

"And Fury just summarily ordered her execution? That's... are you sure there's nothing going on, something above your clearance, maybe?"

Phil shook his head. "There's more to it, and I have my suspicions, but right now, that's all you need to know. Before we can go any further, I need you to hack into SHIELD's mainframe and get me the full copy of Fury's file. As soon as possible."

Her eyes hardened. "You don't ask for what's easy, do you Phil?"

"No."

The waiter hadn't brought her coffee yet, but she didn't care anymore, and she stood up to leave. She would do it, of course she would, because he'd asked and she owed him... everything. That didn't mean she was happy about it.

"And Bobbi?"

She'd taken two steps away from the table. "Yes?"

"You can't tell Maria."

Her fingers clenched but she didn't turn back around. "I know."

*****

It was still early, and it wasn't difficult to find a large parking lot and an easily opened car. It turned out that both of them knew the basics of hot-wiring and they made good time.

It was almost peaceful, driving down the motorway towards Germany, finally being able to go somewhere after two days of feeling like he was standing still, waiting for her to arrange things for them. He liked to drive, always had, ever since getting his first car at seventeen and that rush of freedom he felt being able to just get away under his own power.

There wasn't any sign of trouble until after they'd crossed the border.

"How long have they been back there?" Her voice was soft, but edged. She didn't turn in her seat or give any indication she had noticed something, but her eyes were flicking back and forth to the side and rear view mirrors.

"Who... well, shit." Looking himself, he realized that two of the men in the car behind them and to the right were the same ones that had chased them from the shops a day ago. "I don't know. How the hell did we miss that?"

"They're good at their jobs, and we're becoming more distracted." She looked again. "Dammit!"

His grip tightened on the steering wheel as the other car slid neatly into the space opening up directly behind them. The mens' body language changed, dropped the pretense of acting casual. "Yeah, they know we know. Hang on," he warned, just before he pulled the wheel hard to the right and changed lanes. Several of the surrounding cars honked their horns but there was just enough room that he managed, sliding expertly between two other vehicles. He double checked his clearance and then did it again, putting a full lane between them and their pursuers. "Because with everything else we need these two knuckle-heads after us," he muttered under his breath. They were already making a lane shift of their own. Traffic was crowded, which worked both for and against them - there was still one more lane to change before they would be able to take an exit to a different road and no clear space to do so was opening up.

Natasha already had one of the guns in her hand, but he could tell there were too many people in too many cars and too many variables for a shooting solution to be viable just yet.

"Can you get us off the motorway and onto a smaller road? Maybe away from people?" 

"That would be what I'm trying to do," he snapped, still watching for a break in the traffic to their right.

"Well, do it faster." She unsnapped her seatbelt and he had to look twice to see what she was doing, then to see around her, as she climbed into the back seat and took a better position that gave her more visibility behind them.

"You've got five cars coming up on the right before there's a gap. If you slow do-"

"Already there." He didn't slam on the breaks, there were too many cars behind him for that, but he eased on them enough that the lane to their left was moving faster and forced the bad guys' car to pass them. Their brake lights came on, but it gave them the precious seconds they needed, as well as lining them up so that he could veer sharply over one more time. Picking up speed, he spotted the next off-ramp and aimed for it.

He was going too fast by the time they took the ramp, but the car didn't tip over, just created enough centrifugal force to lean them both sharply sideways.

The road led to a open countryside and a fairly wide two-lane road with what looked to be rural land on either side.

And the bad guys were still behind them.

"Goddamn it!" he cursed, and picked up more speed.

"At least now we can shoot them," she observed calmly.

"Just keep in mind we've got to conserve ammunition," he shot back. "There's a road coming up, it looks like it might lead to some kind of-"

Whatever he was about to say was lost as she yelled a warning just as the other, larger car slammed into them hard from behind.

He jolted forward hard enough to hit the steering wheel, felt the blood start to trickle down his face. A second impact and he felt her body hit the back of his seat and the angle drove them sideways. They fishtailed and he wrenched the wheel hard, narrowly avoiding a stone wall but still ending up halfway rolled into the ditch. The attacking car had shot by them, and squealed to a stop several yards away.

"Fuck," he bit out, reaching for his gun even as he started untangling himself from the seat belt. She was pressed against the back passenger's side door, and he could see she was trying to open it.

He scrambled over the gear shift and opened his own side door, giving him just enough room to pry himself out of the car. A bullet winged over his head and he put a bullet into one of the men in response. The car itself provided quite a bit of cover while he struggled with her door from the outside. It was well and truly stuck. "Move," he ordered, just before taking the butt of his gun handle and shattering the window glass, then turning back to the approaching men. He shot another right between the eyes, but they were shooting too and Natasha, now out of the car and crouched on the ground next to him reached up and grabbed a handful of his jacket to jerk him down out of the way.

"Three guys are left, I've killed two of them. Still got your gun?"

She held it up. "I've only got five shots left, though. You?"

"I didn't have a full clip. Probably two."

"Well, that sounds like more than enough, doesn't it?" She grinned, and it wasn't a nice grin, but it was reassuring.

That was when the other two cars arrived. 

He stared, open mouthed, for a full half second before his brain kicked into gear and he started reevaluating the situation. "Jesus, Natasha, just how badly did you piss these guys off?"

"Pretty badly." Her grin was gone, replaced by a hard edged look. "Looks like twelve?"

"Yeah. Damn." More men than they had ammunition, so they would have either take them out by hand or take one of their own guns.

It put him in the line of fire, but he stood quickly and picked off two more, then dropped back down and looked at her inquiringly. "Might as well get rid of who we can."

It took her fractions of a second longer to line up the shots, but she still made them just as cleanly. It left their assailants scrambling for cover, and Clint felt the rush of adrenaline mix with the attraction and take his breath away. 

She charged out from behind the car towards the closest of the men, moving quickly and giving them as little time to regroup as she could, and he followed. There was already a body at her feet with a broken neck and she was grappling with another. Clint dodged one of the men coming at them from the other direction and took his legs out from under him with a swipe, then reached out and slammed his head hard enough against the pavement he heard a satisfying crack. He rolled back to his feet and kicked the gun out of the final man's hand and received a kick to the chest in return that sent him staggering back several steps.

Right into Natasha.

There was a moment, just a second really, of disorientation at the contact, but it was enough. He heard her grunt even as the guy he was fighting got his hands on him. He struggled, rolling, finally throwing the other man to the ground in such a way that he heard the his neck snap. The gun he'd dropped was within reach and he grabbed it even as he was standing up and turning to see if she was alright.

The remaining two men were standing, holding her - her arms were wrenched behind her back in a way she probably could've gotten out of, except one of them was holding a wicked looking knife to her throat while the other held a gun to her head.

Damn.

Her eyes were clear and calm, but he could see on her face she knew how difficult the situation was. Either weapon could take her out in a hair's breadth of time. He was just one man with one gun.

It was an impossible shot.

Good thing he excelled at those.

The first bullet took out the man with the gun, and as he'd hoped the guy with the knife flinched. Clint watched the blade slice along her collar bone and shoulder rather than her neck as the second bullet punched home between the man's eyes and he fell. 

*****

Natasha was steady on her feet as she stared at Clint, trying to process what had just happened. She had known, when she'd felt the blade at her throat and the gun at her temple, that her chances were slim. Even though Clint had a gun, taking out either man would lead to the other taking action. No one should've been able to make two shots so quickly and accurately.

But he had. More importantly, he hadn't hesitated, hadn't given the assailants a chance to get secure in their stance or position. Bare seconds had gone by since he'd seen her position, evaluated, taken aim, and fired. 

Not even her response times were _that_ good.

Her upper chest was starting to sting where she'd still caught the edge of the blade, but she could tell it hadn't hit anything vital. 

"You're bleeding," he observed dryly.

"It's not bad. Just messy." She looked down, fingered the edge of the torn fabric and the skin near the wound, checked how deep it had gone. "I've had worse. It might not even need stitches."

"We need to get out of here. Find some place to clean up and regroup."

Nodding, she crouched down next to the two bodies at her feet and started patting them down for anything useful, like car keys or weapons. From the corner of her eye, she saw him start to do the same, as if by moving she'd broken some kind of spell.

The world was still too bright and edgy with the remnants of adrenaline as she found what she was looking for. She tucked two guns into the back of her waist band and pocketed a switchblade. Clint was finishing up with the last of the others when she walked over, dangling the keys in front of her like a prize. "You able to drive?"

"Yeah. Any idea where we're heading? Are we still going to try to reach Bern, or... ?"

"It's only about three more hours if we head straight there. I think that would be our best option, but we'll need to keep a better eye out for tails."

"Think they'll know this was us?"

"Do you mean SHIELD? No telling. How much of a connection are they going to find between you and these guys?"

She handed him the keys and they headed for the car. "Yesterday? I would've said none. Today? I'm not sure."

"Well, then let's get as much distance between us and here as we can."

 

*****

The rest of the drive passed without incident, and Natasha could feel herself uncoil with each hour that went by that no one followed them. It was late afternoon when they finally reached Switzerland, and she felt all the tension knot back up as she gave him directions to her home.

It was unassuming, a small two story house tucked back away from the road just outside of the city. She'd deliberately picked something with no visible neighbors, though there were several houses within a few miles in either direction. She'd never pictured anyone else here, but took a deep breath and unlocked the door with it's electronic code.

"There's a generator in the back, I'll go turn it on. The kitchen's through there and there should be something in the cabinets we can eat. I left several cans of food and some power bars the last time I was here."

Once the generator was running she found him in the kitchen, perusing their options. He paused in the process of opening some jarred tomato sauce and looked at her in the waning sunlight and flinched. 

"God, Tasha," he hissed and reached out, pausing before he actually touched her bloody shirt. "Let's get you cleaned up." 

Her fingers reached out and rubbed over the dried blood on his face and she tried to ignore how he leaned into her touch. "You're not such a pretty sight, yourself."

 

*****

She let him guide her over to one of the kitchen chairs, and didn't try to take the first aid kit or damp cloth from him, she just sat there as he started to wipe away the blood that she had smeared across her throat.

"You nearly _died_ ," he stated flatly, the moment on the road stuck on replay in his mind. As he moved down her neck, he could already see the wound was shallow, and she'd been right about it not needing stitches, but the blood had dried and her shirt was sticking to the wound in a way that looked painful. She didn't flinch when he tugged it free. The shirt was ruined anyway, so he slipped it off her shoulders and tossed it in a heap on the floor. The blood had soaked down into the fabric of her bra as well, but he left that where it was. His control was good, but not that good. 

"it's not your fault, you know." Her voice was soft and even. Calm, despite everything. "It's not your job to protect me. I didn't notice them, either."

"I notice things. That _is_ my job. If we'd realized the tail sooner, or-"

She reached up and grabbed his face, stopped him and looked him in the eyes. "The only reason I'm here is because you did the impossible."

"Don't remind me."

"Then stop torturing yourself with it," she shot back.

"If we'd done what you suggested two days ago, you wouldn't have been distracted when we ran into one another and he wouldn't have gotten the drop on you." He'd figured out that much of what had happened during the fight. She hadn't been having any trouble until that brief moment of overwhelm when they'd touched. It didn't even have to be bare skin anymore, as if the universal mechanics involved were getting impatient with them.

Cautiously, he traced his fingers over the skin of her shoulder, then wiped away more of the blood. She was smooth and warm, impossibly soft under his fingertips. 

"Are you rethinking your decision?"

He took a deep breath. "If we do this, you have to be straight with me. Don't treat it like I'm a job, don't try to be someone else."

"I'm not sure how," she admitted. Her hand was still resting against his face.

"Have you ever done this, for yourself? Have you ever had sex with anyone when it wasn't a job, or an assignment?"

"Once or twice. But they didn't care how I acted or who I was. It was just... experimentation." 

"I don't want that. For this to be like that, for either of us."

Eyes on hers, he felt, rather than saw it, when she took the wash cloth away from him with her free hand and brought it up to his face. She tilted his head so that she had a better angle and broke their eye contact for just a minute while she wiped the blood from him, too. He let her, reaching up when she was done to bring her hand to his mouth and press a kiss against her skin. "Let's finish getting you bandaged up."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Interlude: Honor and Loyalty](http://archiveofourown.org/works/565853) was published between Chapters 7 and 8.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Emulating magic was a far cry from participating in the real thing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See Chapter 1 for more notes.
> 
> Please note the changes/addendums to the warnings.
> 
> Oh my god. I'm not sure how it ended up being a month. _(I'm lying to you, I know exactly how, it's called NaNoWriMo, and remind me never to do both that and an active WIP AT THE SAME TIME EVER AGAIN plskthnx.)_ But I am so, so sorry it took so long.
> 
> Thank you as always to Anuna and Kadollan for looking this over, and to sunny_serenity for general cheerleading and thoughts and music! And thank you to everyone who's left such awesome feedback. I really <3 the discussions and meta and I always love to hear what you think about it. :D
> 
> Big things are happening for everyone here. You've been warned. And we're about to earn that adult rating, so children, avert your eyes. (Oh c'mon, like you didn't know this was going to be "the" chapter? You're not fooling me. That also might be one of the reasons it took so long... talk about performance anxiety. Ahem.)
> 
>  
> 
> [Interlude: Honor and Loyalty](http://archiveofourown.org/works/565853) was published between Chapters 7 and 8.

She'd had people treat her wounds before. Much more serious wounds, ones that had required surgery or sutures, but usually things this small she took care of alone. It had always been just a part of the routine, debrief, clean up, get your next assignment. This was entirely different.

Had there ever been anyone to take care of her? Had there ever been anyone with a brief touch for comfort or a kiss against her hair? She certainly couldn't remember anything like that as a child. She could remember overtures from various targets she was stringing along, but the care hadn't been for her, just for a construct she had stepped into. And even in those instances, they weren't usually the type of people willing to put themselves between her and a potential threat, and certainly weren't the type of people willing or able to meet the full reality of her world head on.

Despite their earlier decision, once he'd finished with the first aid kit he'd washed his hands and gone back to trying to put food together while she'd showered and dug out a clean sweater. Breakfast had been hours before and adrenaline had left a gaping hole in it's wake. With a glance down at her hands she realized there was a fine tremor to them. 

When she looked up, he was watching her.

"Here, start with this," he said, and tossed her one of the energy bars he'd found. "I'm not much of a cook, but pasta and canned sauce is hard to fuck up so it should be edible. It'll still be a few minutes though."

"Thank you," she murmured, and she wasn't sure if she was thanking him for the bandages, the food, or something more abstract. It ought to feel _wrong_ , she thought, to have someone else here, taking over and doing such domestic things in this space that was _hers_ , but it didn't. 

While practical, she suspected the cooking was at least partially a stalling tactic. That was fair. She was nervous about it too - emulating magic was a far cry from participating in the real thing, after all. Beyond that, it was a step that would change... everything. For both of them. She couldn't actually conceptualize that, what it would mean and how things would change, she just knew in her gut that they _would_. He didn't want her to pretend, but she wasn't sure she knew how not to. The tension was spinning tighter between them as every touch, every minute spent so close together added fuel to the fire, somehow both better and worse now that she knew it was going to end soon.

They ate mechanically, silently, and when they were both done she cleared away the dishes. By the time she was finished, he'd relocated to the study and was looking at the bookshelves, the ones she'd meticulously stocked with books in a variety of languages, mostly fiction and plays and a small handful of poetry.

"Have you read all these?" 

She smiled. "Not yet. I want to someday."

"Is that the plan when you leave? Just hole up here and read?" 

He could've said it in any number of different ways, but his tone held only curiosity, not scorn, so she considered the question. 

"If I want to, yes." Three days of habit had her standing several feet away from him, just outside of arm's reach to prevent any accidental touches. Which was no longer necessary, she realized. He was two steps away and she made herself take them so that she was close enough to feel his body heat.

There was no physical indication that he'd noticed, but his voice sounded slightly strained. "What do you want, Natasha?" He was still staring at the bookcase, rather than at her.

She set her hand on the small of his back and felt the muscles tighten. "We weren't allowed... we didn't want things. We couldn't. If you wanted something, they would find out, and that was one more thing they could use against you. If you want things you become your own worst enemy."

"They're not here right now." 

There was so much power held within him just under her hand, and she could feel how hard he was holding onto his control.

"Do you want this?"

She didn't have to ask what "this" referred to, and knew what he really wanted to know was _do you want me?_ And she had no idea how to answer that - she had years of shouting herself down and reminding herself of her plan, of her haven and her dream. _Alone alone alone_ \- it was a mantra she'd been chanting in her head and her heart, her only constant despite how the rest of her memories and experiences shifted and changed on her handler's whims. Her fingers found the space between the hem of his shirt and the edge of his jeans and rubbed along a line of bare skin.

He braced his hands on the bookcase in front of him and she could see that his knuckles were white with tension.

She dropped her hand and took several steps across the room. He didn't turn around and didn't see her run her fingers through her hair in frustration.

Their eyes met over his shoulder when he finally looked back at her. 

"Do you want _me_?" She had asked that question so many times in so many different ways of so many different people, but here there was no artifice, no attempt at seduction. He turned without breaking eye contact, followed her across the room until he was standing in front of her. 

"Yes."

"Then what are you waiting for?" 

He reached out and touched her face, ran his thumb over the arch of her cheek before his hand settled warm and solid on her jaw.

“Nothing.”

******

She tasted like fire, warm and sharp and sweet and he didn't think he would ever be able to get enough of her. He felt more than heard her whimper against his mouth and held her face in his hands. 

No more resisting, no more fighting with themselves or one another. It should've turned wild, should have been spiraling faster and faster out of their control, but he didn't want it to be that way. He traced the curve of her lips with his mouth, brushed his thumb down across her pulse point and felt how hard it fluttered against his skin. There was weight and pressure that made it hard to breathe and she kept pulling away, just a little, just enough to try and drag in more air.

She wasn't touching him, and he could feel how tense she was holding herself. She'd locked up, and he wondered if she felt that same sense of being about to fall.

"Relax," he whispered against her skin as he brushed a kiss against her temple, mirroring the one he'd given her the night before. His fingers slid through her hair and cradled her head and he rested his forehead against hers while he let his free hand slide down her arm until he reached her hand, clenched tightly into a fist. "It's ok. You can let go." He brought her fist up and kissed her knuckles, then turned her hand over and nudged at her fingers until he could press a kiss against her palm. 

"Feel this?" he asked as he placed her now open hand against his chest, just over his heart. He knew it was pounding, racing out of control. "I'm scared, too."

With a small, desperate sound he felt her grip his shirt and she kissed him, reaching up for the back of his neck and pulling him roughly to her.

******

She couldn't remember how they got to the bed, but she felt the quilt and sheets under her bare shoulders, could vaguely remember having to break away from him long enough to tug her sweater over her head. He came down on top of her and she arched against the feel of his bare chest against her stomach, but her bra and their jeans were still in the way.

Clint braced himself on one arm and used his free hand to trace a line down her neck, her collar bone, between her breasts and right over her heart and she felt it stutter against his touch as he briefly let his palm rest there and looked down at her, maintaining eye contact. Slowly, so slowly, he lowered his head until he could kiss her, frantic energy once again turning into the deep intensity he seemed so determined to cultivate between them.

It made her skittish, it felt like too much and too heavy, like there was a weight pressing down on her far more meaningful than just the weight of his body over hers. Fast and frantic would be safe, would be understandable, could be discarded under any number of rationalizations later, but this... 

It was too much.

It wasn't _enough_.

She fumbled with the button and zip of his jeans, things she'd had long practice with felt suddenly beyond her, but she managed. She was able to slide her hands underneath the denim and cotton, palms against the warm skin of his stomach and he shook hard above her and his arm threatened to give way. His eyes still held hers and they widened at the feel of her touch even as he was shifting to help her push his pants down and away. She wondered if her eyes were as dark as his.

Looking away wasn't an option anymore. Clint shifted so that he was sitting up on his knees over her and she felt more than saw him dealing with her clothes in return. She arched her hips up so he could slide the offending fabric down over her ass and they both hissed out sounds when the juncture of her thighs met his. His sound was unintelligible, but hers was an awful lot like a "please" and he grinned.

She kicked her pants off the rest of the way, which only served to bring her back into closer contact with him, wet against hard and rubbing more firmly against him until he said her name in a warning tone. She arched up enough that he was able to reach behind her and unfasten her bra, then he tugged it off and tossed it aside. She stilled as he looked at her, and his hands which had just been pulling roughly at her clothes gentled and traced softly over her curves. She felt like she was suspended in the tension of the moment, poised on a point where she couldn't move. He leaned down and kissed her, hot and breathless and needy, then he was shifting, rolling onto his back and pulling her with him, over him and she was the one with more control. She needed it, she realized, still gasping into his mouth, and that was followed by the understanding that he'd figured that out and was willingly giving it up. From this angle there were all kinds of practiced moves she could make, all sorts of things she could do to him, for him. She could make him cry out, make him beg, anything. _No pretending,_ she reminded herself sharply. _No tricks._

She watched his eyes, his face, and simply braced her hands on his shoulders and lowered herself down onto him.

*****

His hands started out at her hips, anchoring her to him once he was fully sheathed inside of her, but neither of them moved. It felt like the moment before a storm breaks, before the first shot is fired in a firefight, when it's already inevitable and all you can do is wait for time to catch up. Her first moves were almost tentative, a subtle shifting that caused his grip on her to tighten and his own hips to buck up against hers in response, but the pace increased quickly as the need, the demand grew insistent. 

She tightened above him and only his grip in her hair kept her from throwing her head back, kept her from looking away as it wound tighter and they both got closer, looking at one another and watching the arousal build on each other's faces.

And then...

_connection_

"Holy shit," he breathed, had to force himself to breathe through it, to lock onto her eyes and hold himself together. Time stretched out, slowed to a crawl but over in an instant. "Natasha," he whispered. "What the hell did they do to you?"

His other hand moved to cradle her face and it was wet with tears. But she wasn't crying for herself, he realized abruptly. Just like he'd gotten hit with the enormity and weight of her past, she'd seen his.

It wasn't memories. It wasn't even thoughts. He still had no idea _exactly_ what she'd done when she was five, twelve, seventeen, or twenty, but he could feel - now knew intimately - the shape her life had given her. He knew the desperation she'd felt, her loss, her loneliness, as well as her strength, her determination, her fierceness. She knew his patience, his calm, his sense of justice, as well as his anger, his confusion, his despair.

Suddenly, he could see where her masks - so carefully, elaborately crafted and worn closer than a second skin - he could see where they ended and where she began. It ought to disturb him, because he knew she could see him just as clearly, but if it felt like anything, it felt like relief.

Never alone.

Never again.

It was some seriously heady stuff.

He moved beneath her, still hard, and flipped them over, driving more fully inside of her. Her fingers tightened on his shoulders as she arched at the sensation. Her head tipped back just slightly but her eyes stayed steady on his - neither one of them could look away. He could drown here, within her.

All of the rough edges they had that caught on others and torn at them, making them _not right_ , suddenly clicked into place, fitting perfectly. She wrapped her legs around his waist as he moved above her and he could feel that she was close to the edge again but almost frantic, resistant to going over again while this emotionally open and raw.

“C’mon, baby. It’s safe,” he whispered. “Come for me.”

His name was a strangled cry in the back of her throat and she shattered, breaking apart beneath him as she came. He fought his own long enough to watch her, entranced by what it did to her, then he was falling too, falling, exploding, shattering - they were both turned into so many pieces and he didn’t think they’d ever be able to sort them all out again.

 

*****

 

The room was dark, and cold, but he was choking on the smoke.

That wasn't right.

He knew this nightmare, he hadn't had it in years, but he could remember all the nights he'd woken up, even as a fully grown man, with the taste of burning wood and cloth stuck in the back of his throat and sweating from the heat he could swear he still felt on his skin. He'd been ten when the big top had caught on fire, perched in the crow's nest because he was hiding out from Trickshot again, because he knew when he finally came down there would be hell to pay for talking back and then taking off before they could beat him. He'd known better but he couldn't help it, couldn't resist running off at the mouth, just like always. So he'd hidden, hoped they'd all get drunk and go to bed and he'd be able to sneak back down and they'd have forgotten in the morning.

No one knew what had started the fire, but the tent had caught and then the beams and the ropes and he'd been trapped up high as the smoke rose to choke him. The fire department in the nearby town had gotten it put out, gotten him down (and yes, there had certainly been hell to pay, later) but it was the fear and the heat and the smoke that had stuck with him into adulthood.

Why was it cold?

That same room, those same screams, and the gunfire and the cold tile against her cheek, but she could smell smoke and she was choking on it. 

Wrong, wrong, wrong. There was never smoke in the facility, except for cigarette or cigar smoke when the army officers visited them. Never wood smoke, she hadn't learned that smell until much later, on a mission in Kuybyshev.

There was cold beneath her skin, but the air in her throat and nose were too hot and she was coughing instead of screaming and that was wrong.

It was too dark and he couldn't see, but he could feel something wet and sticky and warm against his hands, interrupting the cold tile floor and through the smoke he could smell blood.

He forced himself to open his eyes, and she saw him staring back at her.

*****

Clint jolted awake and he was gripping her arm hard enough to bruise. She had an equally tight hold on his shoulder. Breathing was his first priority, speaking was a secondary consideration and he didn't even try.

Her other hand was against his face, a gentle contrast to her fingers where they still dug into his muscles. He forced himself to relax, to let go of her and instead he stroked along the line of her body in what he hoped was a calming motion. His own heart was still racing, he knew hers had to be as well.

"That was your nightmare," he finally managed to get out. "The cold room, and the blood."

"You were in a fire," she whispered. "You nearly died."

"There was someone screaming, someone being shot."

"You couldn't breathe, couldn't get down."

He pressed his forehead against hers, shutting his eyes against all of it. His memories, her memories, knowing that she'd been there and seen that, felt that, but also realizing that he'd seen and felt her. He pulled her to him more fully, felt her wrap herself around him like the last solid thing in the world and it was easy from this angle to just rock together. It wasn't even sexual, but was extremely intimate; it was the feel of their hearts beating in time and their breathing together and the feel of skin against skin which was a need too often denied that went well beyond hormones and sweat-tangled bodies.

Eventually, it did shift tone, and they became aware of how hard and soft and curve and angle fit together. It was almost familiar now, and their mouths met, and their tongues tangled, and their bodies weren't far behind. Side by side they faced each other and took and gave, pushing dark memories out with better ones. She came with a sigh and he followed on a moan and then they lay there in a long silent moment and waited to come down. 

He was idly stroking her hair and tracing patterns against her hip when she pulled away from him. She got up out of the bed and crossed to the window and for a long time, she just stared out at the night sky.

"I don't know what to _do_ with this," she finally admitted, holding out her hands and looking down at them, as if they were alien to her. Where before he would've had to guess at her meaning, now he knew she was talking about the softer things that were happening between them.

"You... there wasn't anyone, not really, that cared about you, was there?" He knew now, of course, that there hadn't been. It was like he could tell the True things about her from the half-shadows she pulled around herself to pretend to be someone else. If he wondered about something, if he thought about it for just a minute, he could tell if it was right or wrong, even if he couldn't always explain why.

"I don't even know what that is. That's not true." She backtracked slightly, considered. "I know how to pretend to care. I know the actions, the forms. It's not the same thing," she finished, and her voice trailed off, a little lost.

He got up after her and stepped in close behind her, wrapping his arms around her shoulders and pulling her back against his bare chest. He rested his cheek against her hair. 

"No. It's not." 

He hadn't had much growing up, but he could remember his mother, just a little bit, and there'd been Barney for awhile, until they'd gotten older.

She turned in his arms and looked up at him, and it was stark terror written across her face.

"As long as I can remember, I've only wanted one thing. One. I've wanted to be alone. Free."

His heart hurt - literally _hurt_. "And now, you can't be."

"Not... entirely. I can feel it, that I won't be alone anymore." For most people, that was the draw, the attraction. For her it was anathema. 

"You can still go away," he found himself saying, even though a part of him screamed _no_. "If that's what you want, I won't hold you here or follow you. Not unless you ask me to."

"Then you would be alone, too."

"Yeah. But it would be worth it, to know you're happy." 

The laugh that escaped from her was bitter and raw. "That's something else I don't know anything about, Clint. What does "happy" even mean?" She turned in his arms then, and he was looking at her like she was something beautiful and precious and the moment of fear turned into one of confusion and pain.

“Don’t look at me like that,” she whispered roughly.

“How?”

“Like I’m something good. Precious. Don’t look at me like that. I’m not.” 

So quickly she couldn’t track the movement he grabbed her face in his hands, holding her still so that she couldn't look anywhere but at him.

“The _hell_ you aren't," he said viciously. "You are precious to me."

"You don't know-"

He cut her off. "I know _exactly_ who you are now. I _see_ you, Natasha. And you are good, and you are beautiful." 

It was too much and she had to look away. Because she knew that he meant it and no matter where she looked inside herself, she couldn't find an answer to all the questions he wasn't asking her, but that she could tell were on the tip of his tongue.

*****

Eventually he pulled her back to the bed, and she drifted off as she lay across his chest. Even after he knew she'd fallen asleep he kept up the rhythmic motions of his fingers combing through her hair. He would never say it out loud, didn't know how to keep it from sounding corny or trite, but looking down at her, he knew it was _this_. It was _her_. A deep contentment settled in his chest and he knew without a shadow of a doubt that she was what his life had been leading up to. All his aimless wandering, all of his mistakes and successes had brought him here to her and the realization was as frightening as it was humbling. He'd never honestly considered the possibility of some kind of larger hand in the design of things, he hadn't ever concerned himself with universal mechanics one way or another, but now he thought maybe he understood better those who did.

She shifted slightly in her sleep and her arms tightened around him, able to do in her sleep what she couldn't do while waking. 

Just like he knew that he was where he was supposed to be, he also knew, now, that she was going to leave. That she had to leave if for no other reason than to prove to herself that she _could_. The future was uncertain in a new and daunting way; assuming, of course, that they even survived long enough for it to come to pass. 

*****

On any given day, the hangar deck of the carrier was a hive of activity, with busy people running back and forth trying to do their jobs, but when Maria arrived at 0740, it was a mad house.

She saw Coulson moving along just behind what was obviously a strike team - _did they even have any ops in progress that required a strike team? What the hell had been going on while she'd been in D.C. that she hadn't been informed about?_ \- and she flagged him down. 

"Agent, a moment." She waited until they'd gotten just offside and out of direct earshot and line of sight. "Do we have something in progress? What's with the Strike Team? That's Alpha team, isn't it?"

"Yes," Coulson agreed, and the look on his face was darker than she could ever remember seeing it. That, more than anything else, set her on edge and put her inner alarms to jangling. "We've gotten some new intel on Barton's probable location, and Director Fury has ordered strike team Alpha to go and follow up on it."

"I'm sorry, did you say 'Barton's' location? Who's taken Barton?"

"It's more complicated than that."

"Coulson, don't make me order you to tell me," Maria warned, because she hated pulling rank on him, and the whole situation, or rather the way he seemed to be reacting to the situation had every alarm bell she possessed going crazy. Something was _wrong_ her instincts were trying to tell her, and further, they were telling her Coulson knew what it was.

"Barton brought in Romanov instead of completing the hit. She came willingly into custody, they didn't even exchange shots. Fury ordered him to kill her to prove his loyalty, so Barton broke her out and they escaped."

Maria waited a beat for the punchline, or for the world to completely spin out from under her feet. Something, because this was obviously some kind of screwed up dream. Surreptitiously, she pinched herself.

It hurt.

"Barton disobeyed direct orders?"

Coulson nodded, then glanced at the quinjet where the team leader was waiting for him. "It's more... that's not everything. But it's all I can say for now. Watch the surveillance footage and look at the mission reports." 

It took her another four hours before she could do that, because there was more about the day to day ship and checking back in that had to be addressed from her absence. She gave Fury her report from the Department of Defense meetings face to face, and found herself watching his body language closely, but nothing seemed particularly out of the ordinary.

Until.

"Agent Hill." She'd been almost out the door, he'd already sat down behind his desk.

"Sir?" she turned slowly, professionally she thought, back around to face him.

"I imagine you've heard about the recent situation with Agent Barton?"

"Yes, sir. I ran into Agent Coulson this morning on the hangar deck when I arrived and he briefed me."

"Did he, now? And what exactly did he say?" There was a dangerous edge to Fury's tone that she didn't think she liked very much at all.

The last thing she wanted to do was point that edge in anyone else's direction. "Just that Barton had gone rogue sir. Specifically that he had chosen to escape with a Russian operative we had in custody rather than following orders and terminating her, and that we had some new intel on his position that Coulson and Alpha team were following up on."

Fury gave her a long, measured look before inclining his head in a slight nod. "There was a shoot out in Germany, just outside Dusseldorf, that involved some mid-level drug runners with connections to the Russian Mafia. Preliminary ballistics show that one of the guns used was Barton's and another was from one of the guards he disabled while making his escape. We're closing in on them. I have Coulson leading the retrieval."

Something in his tone of voice chilled her and she did her best to keep her face neutral and her tone of voice even. "Very good, sir. Is there anything else?" Calm. Rational. Unconcerned. As if it was every day that one of their top agents ran off with enemy assets and as if it was standard SHIELD policy to send someone's teammate and personal friend out to retrieve them. If they were going by the book, Coulson shouldn't be anywhere _near_ this mission - at best he'd have been benched for a conflict of interest, and at worst he'd have been under suspicion himself for possible collusion.

She'd never been quite so relieved to feel the doors slide shut behind her. She'd always had a healthy respect for Fury, of course she had, but this was the first time she'd ever felt anything like fear around him.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clint and Natasha have a little bit of time to regroup, and Maria has some hard decisions to make.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (See Chapter 1 for additional notes.)
> 
> I owe you all a huge apology for how long this had taken. The holidays and all their associated things and stresses took a bigger toll on me (and therefore also on my writing time and energy) than I'd ever anticipated. That was combined with hitting the point in the story where I'm having to write out of order quite a bit, so finishing a single chapter is trickier. The good news is, that means that now it's all coming together and should move more rapidly from here on out. I'm pretty sure it's going to come in at 15 chapters, and I've got plans for two more connected interludes in there as well.
> 
> Huge thank yous to SweetWaterSong, Anuna, and Kadollan for the beta work and support!

Natasha woke up when sunlight crossed the bed. She felt heavy and warm, rested - even relaxed, despite the man asleep beside her, and that realization pushed any lingering sleep away. She wasn't a stranger to waking up with another person, but she couldn't remember a time that she'd really _slept_ with someone else so close by. They were tangled together in the middle, she was sprawled across Clint and his hand was caught up in her hair. She remembered, working her way back through the events of the night before, the sex, the nightmare - the bonding. 

She wasn't sure if she was disturbed by how completely he'd gotten inside of her, or if she was upset that she _wasn't_ disturbed by it. She tried to tug her head gently away from his grasp and he stirred in his sleep.

"Uhn. What time is it?" he muttered, eyes still closed. She propped her arm on his chest so she could raise up enough to look at his face, because instead of letting her go, his fingers had tightened in an effort to keep her still. He worked his other arm out from under her and rubbed a hand across his face.

"Early," she said blandly, but he opened his eyes in time to return her smile.

"You're a morning person, aren't you?"

Her smile took on a devious edge. "When I decide to be. Night owl?"

"When I can get away with it."

She shifted against him, just a light change to the cant of her hips, but it was enough to make him catch his breath. 

"God, woman. You're dangerous."

She hummed approvingly, pulled harder against his grip and this time he let her hair go. She rewarded him by sitting upright, then fully straddling his waist and sliding back until he was pressed up against her. He arched back, and she took advantage of the exposed line of his throat to press her mouth against the pulse there.

Hard hands flew up to dig into her hips and his thumbs pressed against her just right and all her lower abdominal muscles clenched sharply, causing her to gasp.

"That's a good sound," he murmured, and took a minute to test her reaction, changing the pressure of his hold slightly and grinning at the resulting noise she made. 

In retaliation, she dropped her hands to his shoulders and twisted her body just enough to arch up and then slide back down onto him so that it was his turn to make inarticulate sounds. Joined together, it was a quick slide from teasing to intense and it didn't take long for them to both go over the edge.

She let him hold her for a long time before she finally, reluctantly, pulled herself away; it was as much a mental action as a physical one. She tried to pull her walls back up against him, suddenly feeling too open and exposed. Out of the corner of her eye she saw him frown, but when she left the bed he let her go.

"I need to shower and dress. I'm supposed to be meeting with my handler in Rheims this afternoon and I need to call in and ask for a change of date and venue."

Behind her, she heard him sit up in the bed, could tell from the way the mattress and sheets shifted around him. She deliberately didn't turn around.

"You're going back?"

"I have to. They don't know that anything has happened, and I'm still months," _years_ , she thought to herself, but wouldn't say it out loud, "away from being ready to leave where they won't be able to follow me. I can't just hand in my letter of resignation." It was snappish, and she knew he didn't deserve it, but a nasty feeling was already taking up residence in the pit of her stomach and she was afraid of allowing any hint of uncertainty cloud her resolve.

"Natasha," he tried, but trailed off when she walked away and into the adjoining bathroom.

"I need you to stay here, I need... time," she finally answered, pitching her voice so he could hear her through the doorway. "Just a little time alone, anyway, and I'll call from the other side of the city. Once I have a new place and time I'll come back and we can make a plan." It was so much more complicated now, with so much more than just herself to worry about. "I'm going to shower," she finished, as she turned on the water and shut the door, effectively cutting off any further conversation.

*****

By the time everyone was preparing for the evening shift change, Maria had read the files on Barton's situation three times. She'd replay the surveillance footage again tonight, alone in her home office, her personal space, so she could make her decision. A big part of her was insisting, screaming really, that Coulson couldn't be right about this and there had to be some other explanation. She'd seen the desolation on his face when the ballistics had come back from the crime scene, proving that whoever had been on the other side of that shoot out had been using SHIELD issue guns, one registered to the missing Agent Barton and the other to one of the guards he'd incapacitated during his escape. SHIELD had a solid trail on them now, and it was only a matter of time. 

The reports though... she had to admit that Coulson had a point. The hostile asset hadn't offered any resistance, either to being brought in or being held. It was obvious from both the medical reports and the security footage that Barton had initiated a bond with the other operative, but she hadn't seen anything to indicate any change in Barton's loyalties or any kind of treason at that point. Yes, he was supposed to kill her, and he hadn't, but their agents had the wherewithal to make decisions in the heat of the moment if they needed to, and this was certainly an abnormal enough situation to have warranted some caution.

No one had attempted to interrogate her. Fury's decision had been swift and final. His filed report had been slim on any actual detail about _why_ he felt she must be terminated with extreme prejudice (by Barton himself, no less, and yes, he'd been very specific in his orders to consider Barton a hostile unless and until he complied.) And that frankly turned her stomach. She had no problem, none, doing what needed to be done in the heat of battle. She'd ordered soldiers into no-win scenarios before and had lost people that way. But she had no stomach for casual cruelty, and this felt awfully close to it.

So _if_ Coulson was right, _if_ Fury was moving into the territory of making irrational decisions, was her first loyalty to her commanding officer? To the man who'd believed in her, had hand-picked her and raised her through the ranks because he saw her potential and capabilities. Or was her first loyalty to SHIELD, to the people of the world she'd taken an oath to protect? Right now, his potentially irrational behavior was just affecting people under his direct command, but tomorrow... who knew?

 

*****

The water running in the other room was effective at drowning out Clint's growl of frustration. Everything she'd said had made sense, but he could tell how uneasy she was about it. He'd also caught her hesitation over the word "months" and at a guess figured her original plan had been a good deal longer.

She'd been so open, even happy when they'd first woken up, right up until the real world had come crashing down and she'd sunk back into her professional shell.

Who was he kidding? It wasn't a shell, it was a fucking fortress.

But he actually had the keys. 

Clint smiled in spite of himself, in spite of his worry and frustration. Whether she liked it or not - and the jury was still really, really out about that one - he could read her like a goddamn billboard with flashing lights. It didn't even bother him to know that she could read him just as easily. If you'd asked him a week ago? He'd've said it was a terrible idea, that no one needed to know him that well, that completely. Now?

It was a _relief_ , like a weight had been lifted and he could finally breathe.

The sex was good, too.

 _The sex was amazing_ , he corrected himself.

She'd probably be a few minutes, she seemed to like long showers if the past few days were anything to judge by, so he rolled back over in the bed and let himself drift off to sleep with the feel of her still echoing over his skin.

*****

There was no way to meet on base or on the carrier without being seen, but he knew where they kept their private apartment, knew they were there because he'd seen Maria leave a few hours earlier. 

Bobbi answered the door, her eyes widening when she saw him.

"Phil. Has something happened?"

He shook his head quickly. "No. Nothing yet, they're still trying to locate camera footage to try and identify the other cars. Is Maria home? I have something I need her to look at." 

Their eyes met, and he held up a memory card.

"I- yes, she is. Come in and I'll get her." She let the door open even as she turned around and called down the hall for Maria.

"Phil," she said as she came out of her office. "I wondered if you'd be by."

"I have something I need you to see." He pressed the memory card into her hand and she looked at it for a few seconds before going and getting her personal laptop from the coffee table.

It took a few minutes for everything to boot up and load, and for Maria to sift through the material. She looked up, once, with warning in her eyes at Phil, but he just stood by, waiting.

"This is treason. Having these files _at all_ is tantamount to treason," she finally said, and this time she didn't look at Phil, she looked at Bobbi.

"You pulled these, didn't you? Phil's good with computers, but not that good."

Bobbi took a deep breath and nodded. 

"What were you _thinking_? He's not even in your chain of command. You have _no_ protection here in a court martial! And that is _exactly_ where this is headed. I know how important Clint is to you, but we're talking about your _life_."

"This is not just about Clint. It's Fury, too. We're talking about a man who has his finger on _how_ many nuclear triggers, Maria? How many? He is the Director of one of _the_ most powerful covert operations in the _world_. If he's unstable, do you know how bad that could be? He effectively ordered him to commit _suicide_ , wanted him to destroy potentially valuable enemy intel without even investigating it, and he threatened to have a woman kidnapped and relocated in retaliation for Phil even thinking about questioning his orders. He's coming unhinged, Mar. He's losing it."

"What relocation?" Maria asked, zeroing in on the piece of the puzzle she hadn't heard about yet.

"There's a woman who's important to me," Phil explained. "The Director knows about her, and after I didn't act to stop Barton and the Black Widow from escaping, he told me in no uncertain terms that if I didn't bring them back in, he would have her relocated somewhere I wouldn't be able to find her."

Bobbi pulled the laptop closer and clicked open a folder. "This was in the classified files. Sixteen years ago, the Director killed a fellow Agent, Jin Mae, who was later shown to be a North Korean operative under a long term cover. She'd come to the US on a South Korean student visa in her late teens, gone to an American University and specialized in Mathematics and Asian Linguistics. She got an internship with SHIELD, rose through the ranks, and was partnered with Fury several years later. They still haven't been able to pinpoint when she started transmitting information back to the North Korean government, but ultimately, Fury found out and killed her rather than letting her leave with sensitive information.

"There's no mention of her in his personnel file, at least not that hasn't been redacted. But there was a _lot_ of redaction to it. So I pulled up the Carrier manifests during the time they would've been serving aboard as agents, and they were assigned the same quarters. Their mission logs were almost identical. And you know what the agency scuttlebutt has always said about how Fury lost his eye..."

"So you're thinking, what? That the Director was bonded to this other agent, and when he found out she was betraying SHIELD, he killed her?"

"The medical files following the incident show that the angle of the gunshot wound to his head indicated that it was self-inflicted," Bobbi added. "She wasn't just betraying SHIELD - he must've thought she was betraying him, too."

"'I could not love thee, Dear, so much, Loved I not Honour more,'" Maria quoted softly as she looked at the photo of the young woman's body. The bullet wound didn't show up against the dark fabric of her jacket, the photo didn't even really show the blood she imagined was pooling on the floor beneath her. "How did she get away with lying to him all that time if they were bonded?"

"Not all bonds come with full-blown telepathy," Phil offered. "In fact, telepathy is exceedingly rare. She'd probably been trained from childhood to lie about her actions and motivations. She'd lived over fifteen years here in the US being the ideal SHIELD agent. That aside, would it occur to you that your soul mate was lying to you on that level? About something as important as this?"

"No, of course not." Maria's voice was still slightly distant, her mind more in the past and the story unfolding than at the dining room table.

"There's more there. Things SHIELD found out afterward. There were pictures in her possession of a woman. They did facial matching, and surmised the woman was probably related - closely related - to Agent Jin. Possibly even a sister. And a little girl they'd killed, possibly a niece or cousin. I don't think it was just that she was trained to be a foreign operative. The agents that investigated surmised that the people she worked for were holding her family hostage so she'd continue to feed them information."

"They never told Fury?"

Bobbi shook her head. "His psychological files are all blacked out, so there's no indication what their reasoning was. But these files are pass-coded against even his security level." She flinched slightly as she said it, because she knew what that said about her own actions. Maria's mouth drew into a tight line but she didn't comment on it.

"So all this time, he's assumed that she chose her country over their bond, over him," Phil summed it up neatly, as if the whole situation was that simple. 

"Meanwhile, he chose his country... well, his organization anyway, over her," Bobbi added.

"And losing his soul mate broke him, in some intrinsic way? That's what you're thinking?"

Phil frowned. "I think that the potential situation developing between Barton and the Black Widow is one that he can't see objectively. And that it may have been enough of a final step to put him on the edge, if not over it."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Interlude: Fugue](http://archiveofourown.org/works/679583) was published between Chapters 9 and 10.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The calm in the eye of the storm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See Chapter 1 for more notes.
> 
> As always, many thanks to Kadollan, Anuna, and SweetWaterSong for the beta work and support. :) 
> 
> Technically, this takes place at the same time as Maria's first day back on the job, leading up to the conversation/planning session that Bobbi, Phil, and Maria have at the end of the last chapter. Apologies for the dodgy order of things.
> 
> [Interlude: Fugue](http://archiveofourown.org/works/679583) was published between Chapters 9 and 10.

She ended up driving the two hours to Geneva, deeply unsettled by the idea of contacting her handler any closer to her home. She was going to ask for five more days, even though she knew she'd only be able to get three at the most. She was far, far afield from the meeting point in Kiev, and three days seemed a reasonable amount of time to ask for to get there, particularly if she emphasized that she was on the run from SHIELD. They might be angry that she'd attracted that kind of attention, but the punishment would be relatively mild and swift if she judged correctly. Nothing that would take her out of the field, or that would delay the next mission. 

She didn't want to go back. She never wanted to go back, hadn't since her first mission outside when she was... how old? Could she even remember that much? Fifteen, maybe.

They had played with her mind so many times, played with her memories and perceptions, even changed her name. Natalia wasn't the name she'd been born with, it wasn't even the name she'd grown up with. She didn't remember what her name had been before, any of them. They were gone along with large chunks of her childhood, most of which she'd decided she was better off without. She was glad she hadn't seen any of Clint's memories in full detail, because she shuddered to think what he would make of hers if she'd had them. (Or what he'd make of the fact that she didn't.)

What the hell was she going to do? 

Clint wanted this, whatever they were now, so badly. She could feel it against the surface of her mind. Despite the concerns he'd voiced before they'd bonded, she could feel how much the connection appealed to him. She could tell there had been people he'd cared about in the past and still cared about now. Natasha wasn't even sure she'd ever had a friend, although she could remember a few quiet conversations that were almost friend-like. She remembered talking to another little girl when she was just a child, huddled together in the dark for warmth, but she was hard pressed to term that a dream or a memory. Then there had been Thailand, in another dark room, lying side-by-side in a fancy hotel bed. Even then, Yasha had been a legend in the Red Room and she'd been honored to be working with him - her reward for a particularly successful series of missions in London and Belfast. He wasn't what she'd been expecting from the brief glimpses she'd seen of him prior to their first meeting, he'd been quiet and almost sad instead of confident and to the point like he'd always appeared. 

The mission was hands-off, just the two of them without a handler, something about finding out who had been intercepting weapons shipments and dead drops, and one night when they'd been alone in their room, he'd started asking her questions.

At first, she'd thought it was some kind of test, that he was evaluating her for the Red Room. That had happened before. Operatives were constantly under surveillance and evaluation after all. He asked her what she remembered, from her childhood, from her teenaged years, from before. From before the Red Room, and she'd been vague at first. But he'd seemed so... earnest. He was open and raw in a way she wasn't used to. Despite her fear of knowing too much or too little, of being tested and failing, she'd answered him as honestly as she could. When she'd told him what little she knew, he'd seemed taken aback, almost horrified and she hadn't understood that reaction.

She'd taken a chance back then and asked him what _he_ remembered, and he'd looked confused. _Nothing_ , he'd finally answered, just a cold metal table and being woken up and told that he belonged to the Red Room and had to obey them. Then, a mission, a long period of nothingness, more blurry memories (at best) of medical wards and tests and treatments. She'd recognized those memories because they'd done it to her, too, and they'd spent the rest of the night, wordless, side by side in the bed not quite touching but still deriving something she might call comfort from being together.

They'd survived the mission, but she'd been shot and needed a medical evac afterward. By the time her surgery and recovery was over, he was gone. For weeks she'd been even more guarded, more careful, not sure if he was on another assignment or if they'd found out about their conversations and had punished him, or if she'd be next. Then, nothing had happened and life had gone on.

The city loomed before her and shook her out of her memories. Whatever had happened, whatever had come before, she had to focus on the present. That was all she could influence, all she could control. She parked on the outside of the city, then took public transportation until she reached a nondescript little cafe. The lunch crowd had already thinned and it was easy to find a private corner in the back. She'd picked up an extra phone on her way up the street and she activated it, then punched in a number she knew by heart. 

"Romanova," Gorgovich's voice slid over the line, a smooth but unpleasant sound. "You are late checking in. And you are not in Kiev."

"No. I'm in Geneva. The itinerary changed and I had to make alternate plans. I may need another week to take care of some additional business. The heraldry society is interested in my research and I may need to deal with them."

"That was not approved for your trip. Do you have the research you came for?"

"I do."

"The organization would like a complete accounting of it, in person and on time. We will send a car to pick you up. Rodzianko is finished in Paris, he can come get you on his way back to the facility."

She felt her stomach clench, and wanted, for the first time, to beg. Just one more day, that was all she would need, but she didn't dare. The initial request would be forgiven, could be seen as an alert operative asking permission to go above and beyond, but if she seemed to invested in it, or too averse to the idea of meeting with Alexei Rodzianko, they would know something was going on.

"Fine. Time and place?" she asked, and Gorgovich rattled off an address and a time, then disconnected the call. 

Natasha pushed her coffee aside, untouched. Three and a half hours wasn't even enough time to make it to the safe house and back to explain to Clint in person. Guilt, a feeling she was unaccustomed to noticing, flared. She still had the phone from Amsterdam, she could call him and talk to him at least, and with an almost overwhelming rush she realized she wanted nothing more than to hear his voice. The need to be on her own, to be separate from him had vanished in the wake of Gorgovich's plan and the thought of not seeing him again. _That_ scared her on another level entirely.

If she told him too soon, he might try to come to Geneva. She had the car but there were buses. He might even arrive before Rodzianko, and she couldn't risk Clint being seen. They could _not_ know about him. She would wait until right before her pick up, and call and talk to him then. Just enough time to explain, to tell him she would contact him when she could - surely she could slip away during her next mission and at least call him. She had the number to his phone memorized. A few weeks or a month, and she could talk to him again. One or two more years, and she could finish setting up her exit strategy. He would need additional paperwork, but then... they could just disappear. From the Red Room, from SHIELD, from everyone. If they could just make it that long.

*****

She'd left while he was still in the shower, and Clint was annoyed but was starting to think he understood. He knew himself well enough to know he would've pushed her (again) to let him come along. So she'd known it too, he figured. He didn't like her going off on her own, and it was mostly irrational because he knew she could take care of herself. He just couldn't help but feel like by letting her leave, he was letting her slip out of his life completely (never mind that he was still in her house, and still relatively dependent on her to help get him out of the mess they'd found themselves in). He regretted, not for the first time in the last few days, not having pursued actual espionage training more directly. He'd always been content to be the sniper, the clean-up guy who took out the targets after other agents got done identifying them, but it would've been damn useful to have been able to turn into someone else for awhile or do some of the other things he'd seen her do.

There weren't any men's clothes in the house besides what he'd had on, and the cupboards only had enough food for another day or so. He still had some of the money she'd given him from the bank, and there was a bus schedule on a table in the living room with a stop not far from where they were. She said she'd be gone most of the day and Clint knew he could use both the walk to the bus line and also the time out of the house, moving around under his own power again. 

He grabbed the cash and scribbled a note and stuck it on the fridge. _Gone to get food and supplies. Back soon._ Then he made sure he had keys and the door code memorized, and headed out.

It was a nice walk, a pleasant day, and the bus was on time. Clint made it into Bern easily, and spent about half an hour over coffee and a sandwich before asking the waitress the best place to find clothes and the closest grocer. It was all strangely _normal_ and he wondered when the last time he'd done something this simple had been? Clothes - those were usually a necessary evil, and when he wasn't living in SHIELD issued BDUs and gear he had a hodge podge of things he'd collected over the years. And the last time he'd been to a market for food... probably when he'd had a week's leave and Bobbi had invited him over for Maria's birthday dinner. He remembered that she'd drug him up one street and down another near her apartment in Paris getting just the right things. It had been exhausting, but also a lot of fun, and he wondered what they were doing now? Did she even know that he'd gone AWOL or was Fury keeping that under wraps?

He was on his way back to the bus, bags in hand, when a newsstand caught his eye. One of the papers was German late edition, and the headline described a shooting that had left several dead on a rural stretch of road. He wasn't surprised that it had been newsworthy, but at the edge of the photo that accompanied it, he could see several people in what he knew to be SHIELD gear.

Damn it.

If they were that close, then he and Natasha might not have as much time as they'd hoped.

*****

Natasha walked through the park, then wandered through several of the more tourist-focused areas of the city to pass the time. If she were being brutally honest with herself, she was stalling, waiting until the last minute to try and call because she was afraid of what would happen when she heard Clint's voice. 

People had always had power over her. When she was small, they were bigger, she was dependent on them for food, for shelter, for everything she had. When she got bigger, they neatly held the specter of death over her head like a guillotine - obey or die. Simple. In order to live, she did what they said, regardless of whether or not she wanted to do them. Natasha didn't even think about things like whether or not she _wanted_. 

Clint had power over her, in a new and frightening way. He could ask her to do things, and she would do them _for him_. Because of him. She wasn't sure, couldn't tell if he would be able to convince her not to go, convince her to turn and run away even though she knew it was the wrong time and the wrong way to do it with the best chance of success. If he asked her to come back... she just might. 

So she'd put off calling him as long as she could, but when only about a half an hour remained before Alexei's arrival, she finally pulled out the phone. With each ring her chest got tighter. The voicemail prompt - nicely anonymous - picked up and she couldn't decide if she was disappointed or relieved. She wouldn't hear his voice again for weeks, maybe even months. _Maybe never,_ a dark corner of her mind reminded her. Survival was about as far from guaranteed as you could get in their line of work on a good day. And these weren't good days. 

"They weren't willing to reschedule, they're sending a car to pick me up. I'll be offline while I'm in meetings this week, but I'll try and give you a call when I get some downtime. Take... be careful? Stay put, if you can, that would be safer." _And I'll be able to find you,_ she refrained from saying, hoping he would understand her meaning despite the casual language. She felt ridiculous, and a little lost and more than slightly confused by the emotions pinging around in her head. Feeling them as other people was different than feeling them for herself. At a loss for anything else to say, she disconnected the call, then wiped the history and discarded the phone. 

The car, as nondescript as the man inside it, arrived ten minutes later. 

"Natalia," Alexei said curtly when she opened the door and slid inside. She didn't grit her teeth even though the sound of that name slid down her spine unpleasantly. 

"Alexei," she acknowledged with cool disdain. He knew she didn't like him, and it was mutual, although they'd been partnered together many, many times before. His black hair and blue eyes worked quite well with her coloring, they made a stunning picture on one another's arms when undercover missions required it. Underneath that, he had a cruel streak that she knew she lacked, and he enjoyed leveraging against her.

"You had trouble with SHIELD?" he asked as they pulled out into traffic. 

She kept her voice even and calm. "A bit. They took me into custody just after the dinner, but I was able to get away. There were no physical copies of the information, so they have no idea what I was there for, or what I found out. Other than a brief detour, everything is as it should be."


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Paths diverge and plans are put in motion.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (See Chapter 1 for additional notes)
> 
> Kadollan and SweetWaterSong are both amazing betas (otherwise known as word goddesses) who I'm very blessed to have in my corner. (They are also super fast and on the ball and full of Very Good Ideas.)
> 
> So... the draft is finished. We're still working it over with a fine-toothed comb (because apparently when you write while recovering from a root canal you make really stupid grammar and spelling errors, I don't even know) but the last four chapters, the fifth interlude, and the epilogue, are all _done_. I'll post a chapter every four or five days (depending on how long it takes them to be beta-read. I would really love my betas to continue to speak to me for the foreseeable future and so I'm not expecting them to go through 18,000+ words in a couple days.) I'm hugely, hugely grateful for everyone who has stuck with this, cheered me up and on, and basically kicked my ass until I completed the damn thing. :)

Getting out on his own had helped Clint to soothe some of the antsy need to _do_ something that had been gnawing at him all morning. Give him a mission and he could sit and wait for days on end, but just waiting... he didn't do that well. He didn't notice the voicemail until after he'd put the rest of the food away, and cursed at himself for leaving it in the pocket of his jacket instead of his jeans. The number wasn't familiar, but it could only be Natasha trying to call him and he fought off the urge to just dial the same number back so he could talk to her. He didn't have the same sense of _need_ to be near her anymore, but he'd missed her even while he'd been relieved to be alone for the first time in days. 

He listened to the recording and felt his heart sink. She wouldn't be coming home tonight. She might not be back for awhile, at least a week based on what she'd said, and he thought back to their conversation that morning and knew it would probably be a lot longer. His first instinct was to go after her, but she'd given no hint of where she might be going. SHIELD had been looking for the headquarters of the Red Room for years with no real success, at least not that he'd heard of.

The pain in his chest was something he was all too familiar with. He'd known she was going to go, had begun to brace himself for it, but he hadn't thought it would be this soon. He thought he'd get at least one more day with her. All of that coupled with the underlying threat that accompanied her returning to the Red Room, and the things they might do to her - he had incomplete information, a handful of rumors from files and a few things that he'd been able to interpret from what she'd said and done in the last few days. Then there was her dream, which he knew was a childhood memory. The thought of her out there with them, where he couldn't guard her blind-side made it hard to breathe.

He paced the kitchen while his thoughts ran in those circles, then forced himself to sit down and take stock of his situation. As places to be stranded went, this house and the area certainly weren't bad. He still had a lot of the cash left, enough to get by for a long time if he was conservative about what he used it for. He'd already proven today that he could get back and forth to the city itself without trouble or the need for his own transportation. That was good, too. He could hang out here indefinitely as long as SHIELD didn't manage to track them, and she would know where to look when she could get away. 

If push came to shove, he could probably even find a job somewhere nearby thanks to the paperwork she'd gotten for them. The first passport he'd used had been Canadian, but the backup was for a naturalized Swiss citizen.

The sun was only just starting to set outside, and he realized he wasn't hungry enough to try to cook anything yet. Instead, he got up and made his way back through the house to the study to look over the books. He picked something at random and made himself sit down to read, wondering the whole time if this was one she'd read yet, if she'd liked it, or if she'd ever be back.

*****

The trip back to base took several hours, but Alexei was blessedly quiet. For all that Natasha disliked him, at least he'd always known how to keep his mouth shut. Mikhail or Tatiana would have insisted on talking to her, or at least _at_ her rather than simply accepting the silence. She thought about how familiar they all were to her, and compared that to how it felt to be around Clint. Most of her fellow operatives in the Red Room had been in her life since she was a teenager. She'd trained with them, lived with them and worked with them, but had never felt any inclination to call them friends. She already missed Clint, even though she wasn't sure how that was possible, and thought she ought to be relieved to have her own space again.

The road narrowed before them and Alexei slowed the car as they approached the main gates. The guards waved them in after a cursory look at his ID and a check of the car, and they headed up the gravel drive that led to the complex of buildings that made up the headquarters and main training facility for the Red Room.

*****

Mikhail was waiting for them when passed through the main foyer. "The Overseer said she wanted to see you as soon as you arrived, Natalia," he said, and she didn't like the smile on his face.

"I will speak with her whenever she wishes," she responded, but her tone was icy. She didn't like Alexei, but Mikhail could be a violent and crude man who enjoyed the darker aspects of their work more than even she was comfortable with. As they'd become older, he'd been singled out less and less for covert work and mostly kept in reserve as additional muscle and incentive to uncooperative prisoners. It rankled him, being passed over, and he wasn't shy about taking out that anger on the rest of them when given the chance.

He gave her a mocking half bow, and a weak salute to Alexei before gesturing that she should precede him down the hall. That suited her just as well, she knew exactly where the Overseer would be, and she trusted her reflexes well enough not to flinch at him being at her back. If he'd been hoping for hesitation or some kind of show of discomfort, he was going to be disappointed.

General Pogdorni's office was, predictably, at the end of the long hall, behind an industrial strength door that was meant to seem imposing. She was nadsmotrshchik, the Overseer, the one who ran the Red Room. Natasha had spent far more time in her company than she would have preferred, both as a child under her tutelage, and as an adult once she had graduated to a full-fledged operative. The General herself was actually rather small in stature, but she made up for it by an imposing personality and immovable will. Memory made her seem larger than life, and it was always a little bit of a shock to see her face to face and remember that they were almost the same height and build.

"Natalia." The General's voice was warm, pleasant, and entirely staged. She liked keeping her agents on edge and was a master at knowing exactly how to manipulate each and every one of them. "Please. Sit down."

Natasha sat, and forced herself to relax and even to look vaguely pleased with herself for a job well done. 

"How was Brussels?"

"It went very well. I spoke with Dr. Marchan at length. He's closer than we thought to replicating the original research, but hasn't begun any human trials."

"You read his research?"

"Of course. I committed it to memory. I can brief the science team in the morning."

"And Dr. Marchan?"

"He doesn't remember meeting me. He doesn't remember much of anything for the past two weeks. The serum Prokhorov developed worked admirably and mimicked the effects of a stroke."

"Very good." The General folded her hands over the folder on her desk, and just like that her expression changed. "Tell me about SHIELD, Natalia."

"A SHIELD operative was sent to kill me. I believe it was in response to the unfortunate incident in Prague last month. Like most men, he faltered at the idea of killing a beautiful woman, and took me into custody instead."

"You could not get away from him?"

"I wanted to see how much they knew. He came after me as I was leaving the banquet, and I wasn't sure if he was aware of our true reason for being in Brussels."

"And were they?"

"They were not. I don't believe they connected me to Marchan at all."

"What happened next?"

Natasha continued to keep her body language relaxed and even, as if it was all business as usual. 

"They place too much stock in their mobility as a defense mechanism. It was relatively easy to entice a guard and then break free from their ship. I decided to lay low for a few days before returning, and had to adjust my travel route. I'd lost them well before I reached Geneva and called in."

"Excellent. That will be all tonight, Natalia. Make sure to meet with the science team first thing in the morning, yes?"

"Of course, General. Thank you."

She waited until Pogdorni seemed to turn her attention to her paperwork, then rose and left the room. She was able to feel the General's eyes on her but resisted the urge to turn back around. 

"Am I in my usual room?" she asked Mikhail, who still waited by the door, and he nodded. At the foot of the stairs, he headed off in the direction of the training facilities and she made the rest of the journey alone. The corridors looked familiar but somehow felt alien to her; she had changed but they had not. Her perception of them had changed, she realized. Seeing herself through Clint's eyes (after a fashion) and spending time with him, had thrown a glaring light on many things she'd taken for granted about her circumstances and upbringing. It was comfortable, and it had been easier, before.

In her room she stripped almost mechanically and changed into clothes she could sleep in while she let thoughts tumble through her head. She tried to recall memories, tried to sort out what she thought had actually happened versus echoes of memories that she knew logically were false. As often happened just after a mission, she felt confident about only the most recent events. She knew that once she'd slept, even if she woke up in her own bed, some of that certainty would recede. She often struggled to find sleep once she'd returned to the facility, and tonight was no exception.

*****

It wasn't unusual for Maria to return to the carrier late at night. She'd always preferred to get paperwork taken care of when it was relatively quiet, and the rhythms of the cleaning and maintenance routines was soothing. It was just a skeleton crew, and a handful of agents working remote ops in other times zones. No one questioned why she was there, or why she'd called in two other Agents that weren't technically on the duty roster for the evening. Maria had chosen Williams and Murphy to be her backup against Fury, because she'd known Williams since basic training in the Marines, and she knew that Murphy would follow him into hell and back (and had done so once in Beijing). They were an excellent team, and she trusted them both to have a sense of duty that went beyond just the official chain of command.

If they thought it was odd she'd chosen an abandoned arms locker to meet with her, they didn't give her any indication of it.

She steeled herself as she shut the door and dogged the hatch, then turned around to face them.

"Agent Williams."

"Ma'am?" he replied dutifully, because despite how far they went back he was the picture of decorum while on duty and she'd ranked him for years.

"Do you trust me?"

That cracked his stoic exterior, just a little bit - and Murphy's eyes widened ever so slightly.

"Yes, ma'am."

"Do you trust that I have the best interests of this organization and everything we're sworn to protect at the forefront of my actions?"

"Everyday, ma'am."

"Are you familiar with Article 619, Subsection B of SHIELD's Revised Code of Conduct and Procedures?"

He thought about it for a minute, and she saw on both their faces when they placed it. 

"Hill..."

"Agent," she said with a warning tone. Now more than ever they had to be professionals to the core.

"Deputy Director, ma'am."

"Exactly," she replied, knowing he'd understood her meaning. Article 619 dealt with the proper transition of command within SHIELD, and in subsection B it was clearly stated: 

_In the event that the Director of SHIELD has been compromised or poses a clear and present danger to the workings and integrity of the organization or the general public, it is the right and responsibility of the Deputy Director to relieve him or her of his or her duties and assume the position of Acting Director until such time as a hearing can be established to determine the efficacy and fitness of the previous Director and what further action should be taken. Such further determinations are made at the discretion of the World Security Council as the ultimate governing body responsible for SHIELD actions and orders._

She waited until Williams looked her in the eye and nodded his head slightly, the barest hint but it was enough. Maria turned her attention to Murphy who swallowed hard but met her stare and nodded too.

"I have a meeting with Director Fury first thing in the morning. You will accompany me to that meeting and you will wait outside the door. I will present my case to the Director and request that he stand down. If he refuses, and cannot present me with adequate evidence to disprove that he's been compromised, I'll need your assistance to take him into custody and transport him to the brig."

"Ma'am, yes ma'am," Williams repeated, and they both snapped to attention and saluted. 

*****

Clint had finally gone to bed around eleven, not because he was actually tired, but because he hoped that the night before hadn't been a one-time result of bonding. He didn't relish the thought of more nightmares, but the idea of being able to go to sleep and connect with Natasha again on some level was intensely appealing. If that was even how all this worked, and really, he had no idea. There wasn't a manual for bonds and bonding, he realized. At least he didn't think there was.

And wasn't that odd? he reasoned. As popular as the idea was, shouldn't there be shelves of books about how to find a bond mate, what that would entail, and what would happen? People wrote and talked about everything, and okay, he didn't spend a lot of time browsing regular bookstores in his line of work, but he couldn't remember ever seeing any. Maybe fiction, maybe some historical accountings, but manuals? Not really.

It was the thing that everyone talked about but no one really _talked_ about.

Thinking about it, he could understand why. He'd have been perfectly comfortable (if he'd had any interest in the idea) concocting numerous scenarios about what it might be like to be bonded before he'd actually done it. The reality though was an intensely personal experience, and not one that he would feel comfortable describing to someone else, even if he could find the words to do so. 

He drifted off finally, with thoughts of her following him as he slipped into a dream.

*****

The ballroom was exquisite, and vaguely familiar. She'd been in hundreds like it before, sometimes to charm, sometimes to kill. The people that ebbed and flowed around her were colorful but indistinct. They brushed by her and she barely felt it. She wondered if she would be able to walk right through them. Then firm, familiar hands settled on her waist from behind her. If she'd been awake, she would've reacted before thinking, striking out to disable and taking him to the ground with her knife at his throat but here she recognized him instantly. Unlike the ghostly figures all around them, he was solid and real.

Natasha leaned back against him, and he wrapped his arms around her waist.

"I miss you," he murmured in her ear, and she felt herself relax further at the sound of his voice and the feel of his breath against her neck. There was a sense of safety and warmth in the space between their dreams that caused her to lower her guard and she found herself tracing his hands with her fingers, mapping the play of muscles under his skin. 

"I'm sorry I had to leave. I wanted to come back," she admitted quietly. "But I couldn't tell them 'no'."

"I know. It's okay," he reassured her, and turned her around to face him. "Are you okay?"

"Yes." His grip tightened momentarily and the look he gave her was full of concern. "They debriefed me, they'll want to talk more tomorrow, but I'm fine, really."

"When will you be back?" 

"I don't know. I won't know until they give me my next mission."

"Then we'll just have to make do with right now," he said and ran his hands up and down her arms. They were bare in her evening dress and she felt heat coil low in her stomach. She pressed closer against him in response, and he leaned down to kiss her, long and slow.

"It's just a dream." She sounded surprisingly wistful.

"That doesn't make it any less real. Does this feel unreal to you?" He tangled his hands in her hair like he'd done the previous morning and tugged playfully.

She couldn't help the laugh that escaped. "Of course it does. The entire situation-"

"Feels more real than anything else ever has," he finished and pinned her with a look. And she knew that he was right.

"Fine. Yes, it does. It's unsettling."

"Did you think that when you went back, everything would go back to normal and the last few days would just fade away?"

Natasha wanted to protest, but of course she _had_ expected that. "Maybe," she relented.

He grinned. "Not gonna happen. Like you said, in your own way, we're stuck with one another now. Even if we can't actually be together," and he could still feel her reluctance even under how relieved she was to see him again, "then this isn't so bad, is it?"

She made a small humming noise that he decided was an affirmative, because she moved closer to him and ran her hands up his chest until they met behind his neck. He kissed her again, more thoroughly this time, and despite how hard he was getting, he was surprisingly content with it.

"It's a nice ballroom," he finally said after they'd broken apart for air and she'd rested her head on his shoulder. She'd just opened her mouth to answer him when suddenly he was gone.

*****

Hands drug Clint up out of the dream and he came awake swinging. He felt his fist make contact with what felt like someone's shoulder, but there were too many hands pinning him roughly in place. Then he felt a needle in his arm and someone roughly pulled some kind of a hood over his head. The effects were nearly instantaneous - he didn't completely lose consciousness, but his body turned distant and uncooperative. Someone fastened handcuffs around his wrists and then he was pulled up and dragged from the room.


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Time to lay it all on the table, then.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kadollan and SweetWaterSong are both still amazing. :D
> 
>  **Warnings for this Chapter** : mentions of forced medical procedures/general Red Room evilness, mentions/discussion of assisted suicide (ish) (all pretty canon-typical levels of such)

Natasha jerked awake and forced herself to lie perfectly still while she worked on remembering how to breathe around the hard, fast beating of her heart. She tried to get her body under control and hoped whatever surveillance they had in her room wasn't sensitive enough to pick up her agitation. If they saw she was having nightmares after a routine mission, they might question her further and that was something she couldn't afford.

She feigned sleep for another two hours, until it was reasonable for her to get up and make her way down to the training levels for a workout. She pushed herself through a brutal routine, finally ending up on the balance beam in an attempt to try and regain her center. The mindless physicality of the running and the weights had allowed her to shut her thinking mind off, but the slower, more deliberate movements on the beam brought her analytical side back with a vengeance.

They were miles apart, whole countries in fact. It was a miracle he'd been with her in the dream at all. Anything could've broken the connection, he could've woken up for any number of reasons, or they might've just reached the natural limit of their abilities. It could even have been a residual effect of bonding, wearing off over time. It didn't have to mean that something had happened to him.

Natasha didn't believe that. Even once she was finished, warm and loose and pleasantly worn down from her workout, the ball of icy fear in her stomach remained. She wasn't used to caring about someone, to worrying about them. She certainly wasn't used to wanting to protect someone, let alone wanting and not being able to.

"Natalia."

She looked up to see Alexei standing in the doorway.

"The General would like to see you again. Come with me."

*****

"You can go in now, Deputy Director." Agent Peterson barely looked up from his computer when he waved her back - nothing about Maria's presence or her request to set up a meeting with Fury was out of the ordinary. And if Peterson had any thoughts about why she had two SHIELD agents with her who were still more than a little Marine, he didn't show it.

She asked the other two to remain in the outer room, and strongly implied that she was meeting with them about something else and just needed a minute to take care of this one thing.

Of course no one questioned her.

Fury was sitting behind his desk looking over some kind of report when she stepped inside with the incriminating folder in hand.

"Agent Hill," he greeted her. He didn't wave her into a chair, she never sat when she visited him anyway. 

"Sir."

"What did you need to speak to me about, Agent?"

"I've been getting up to speed on the events in my absence, and I have some concerns about our pursuit of Agent Barton and the enemy agent codenamed 'Black Widow', sir."

Fury stilled in his seat and the tension levels in the room ratcheted up several notches.

"Is that so, Agent Hill?"

"It is, sir. I fail to see why it was necessary to order the Black Widow terminated so prematurely, before she’d even been questioned about what intel she may have been gathering or what insight she might have into the workings of her organization."

"She was a threat, Agent. Her very presence on the carrier was a threat to SHIELD security and our infrastructure. Taking her out sooner rather than later was the most prudent option." His voice was laced with warning, and Maria recognized the tone from the few times she'd heard it used on Agents who'd made critical, catastrophic mistakes.

"Sir, she came in voluntarily and was well controlled while in holding. It also goes directly against SHIELD procedure to order someone with such a personal connection to be directly involved in any such operation. Even if she were a big enough threat to require execution, ordering Barton to do it went against regulations. It also went against basic decency."

Like firing a shot into a crowded mob scene, that was the blow that started the real fight.

"I don't appreciate you questioning my authority, _Agent_ Hill." Fury stood up, letting his coat fall open enough to remind her that he had a gun. 

"Sir, I believe that you are not and have not been seeing this situation rationally."

"Really. Enlighten me then, before I have your ass shipped back stateside."

"The last thing you have ever been, is one to waste an opportunity. But that's _exactly_ what you did. You also broke numerous regulations, summarily ordered an execution, and extorted two agents to act against their best judgment under the threat of kidnapping and murder."

He slammed a hand down on his desk, and she felt her spine straighten even more, and her shoulders square. "Who the _fuck_ do you think you are to stand there and accuse me of anything, Agent Hill?"

Behind her, she was dimly aware of Peterson arguing while Williams and Murphy entered the room and flanked her. She dropped the file onto the desk so that both her hands were free.

"The Deputy Director of SHIELD, sir. Under Article 619, Subsection B of SHIELD's Revised Code of Conduct and Procedures, I am declaring you unfit for duty and ordering you to stand down and relinquish command of this vessel and organization."

"Like hell I will! Murphy! Williams! What the hell do you think you're doing? Don't make me charge all three of you with mutiny!"

"Sir, you have been compromised by your own emotional involvement in this situation, and I have to ask that you stand down for the duration until we can work this out. You're too close to this, you're not objective," Maria tried again, keeping her voice level but not giving any indication that she was backing down.

"My objectivity is _just fine_. You're the one who's gone off her damn rocker!"

Time to lay it all on the table, then.

"I know about Agent Jin Mae. I know everything that happened, I know that you think she betrayed you, and SHIELD, and that you put a bullet in her rather than let her leave with sensitive information."

She saw it then, watched it when something inside him just... snapped.

Fury reached for his gun, and Maria's own draw was just milliseconds behind his.

"Sir, you do _not_ want to do this. Not this way. If you back off, come with us quietly, then there's a chance we can work all this out. But if you shoot me, you'll only prove me right."

"Shut the fuck up, Hill. You don't know a damn thing."

"I know more than you think. I know more than you do about what happened to her." Without lowering her gun, and trusting the agents at her back, Maria reached down with one hand and flipped the file open. She turned over the photograph lying among the pages, and pointed at the horrific image of a woman holding a dead girl.

"That's Mae's sister, and her niece. She was being blackmailed by the North Korean government into continuing to send information back to them on SHIELD. They killed her niece, because they thought it would help keep her in line."

"That's bullshit. She was a trained operative from the very beginning," he argued, refusing to look down, and she could see where he was unraveling. The Lovelace quote she’d thought of last night echoed in her mind.

"If she hadn't been so fanatically loyal, if she'd been swayed from everything she'd been raised to believe in so easily, would you've been able to love her at all? Could you have loved someone, been matched with someone who showed any less dedication than you? Who cared any less about her principles, her country, or her family? She had no choice in what she did, not given who she was. And you couldn't see past that, because your own honor and loyalty were just as strong, just as important to you as Jin Mae's was to her.

"You betrayed each other, Director, because you couldn't do anything else. But that doesn't mean, that doesn't give you the right, to stand here and play god and try to wipe the entire damn mechanism off the map, and you've reached the point where this has eaten away at you for so long that you can't make logical, rational decisions anymore when it's involved. You owe it to those ideals, this organization and the things that you honor, the things that you valued more than her life, to do the right thing now, and step the fuck down. Don't make me shoot you. Please."

She felt time draw out on a breath, a heartbeat, and she watched him break against what she'd said and what he saw there. Like a movement in slow motion, Maria watched him lower the gun until she heard the surprisingly loud sound of it meeting the desk as he set it down. She forced herself to move, to tilt her head just enough to spur Williams and Murphy into movement, and they came around on either side of him to bring his hands around behind his back and cuff them there.

The walk from his office to the brig was silent, or maybe she just couldn't hear any sound over the roaring in her ears. Adrenaline burned through her system almost painfully, but she kept her stride measured and her face impassive. She watched them lock him in a cell, and watched him sink down on the bench inside.

*****

Clint had lost all sense of time since they'd taken him. The drugs kept him awake, but it felt like he wasn't entirely attached to his own body anymore and couldn't get his muscles to do what he wanted them too. His reflexes were sluggish at best, and it took too long to make what he was hearing and feeling make sense. It was a long car ride, and he wondered where they were taking him, but it felt like a distant concern, like a memory from some other lifetime.

God, he hated being drugged.

Finally, when enough light was filling the car that he could sense it even through the hood, they slowed down, then finally stopped and he found himself being pulled roughly out of the back seat. The guy holding his arm shoved him forward with sharp, short order he sort of recognized as Russian. _But I thought I spoke Russian,_ he wondered to himself, and decided that was probably the drugs, too.

At least they were (mostly) letting him move under his own power, confident that he wouldn't be able to work up enough strength to really fight back. And they would be right, he thought sourly. Right at the moment, it felt like a small child would be able to hold him down.

They went inside, and then he felt the lurch of an elevator taking them down, down, down. Sub-basement, maybe, and he'd already decided this wasn't SHIELD. The ride felt like it took forever, but finally it stopped and he was actually picked up, thrown over someone's shoulder, and carried the rest of the way. They dumped him in an unceremonious heap on the floor and he thought he heard a door. He kicked out at them, or tried to, and his legs were grabbed and tied together. Then he was hauled up, set on a chair, and the cuffs on his hands were replaced with stronger manacles.

Only then did they tear the hood off his head, and he blinked rapidly to adjust to the bright lighting.

"Agent Barton, I take it?" A woman's voice, older by the sound of it. It had a rough edge to the guttural Russian accent. By squinting, he was able to make out that she was wearing a uniform, but couldn't make sense of the insignias or medals.

"Who wants to know?" he smarted off, and got a fist in the jaw for his trouble. It hadn't come from her, and he realized muzzily that there was a man on either side of him. _Stupid, stupid drugs,_ he thought irritably. She was pacing around him, and he knew the technique, now combined with his slow reaction times it was designed to put him on edge so he'd react before thinking. _Gotta focus._

"Do you think I have you in here because I want what you know about SHIELD?" Her laugh crawled up and down his spine.

"I suppose you might have useful intel about procedures and security measures, but two things make taking the time to get them out of you... inadvisable. First, I have no doubt that anything you did know of value will be changed - if not now, then before we could utilize it. You are on the run now, are you not? So they no longer trust you. That information is outdated. Useless." She stopped, right in front of him, and her hand shot out to grip his chin tightly, forcing his face up to look at her.

"Second, I would hate to damage you, and I'm sure it would take that. I have so many more uses for you, some of which require you in good health. So you have been spared the ignominy of torture, at least temporarily. I can't promise that I might not give you to Mikhail's tender mercies in the future. But that will come later."

"You are an extraordinary man, Agent Barton. I'm sure you knew that. Your marksmanship is respected even here in the Red Room. Almost as extraordinary in your own way as our Natalia. We've noticed over the years of our research that extraordinary people often bond, but it begs an interesting question. Does the fact that they are extraordinary make them more susceptible to bonding? Or is their susceptibility to bonding what makes them extraordinary in other regards, as well?"

Clint shifted against the cuffs that held him to the chair. He couldn't help it, couldn't sit still. The full implication of what she was saying hit him and it was more terrifying than any threat of torture.

"It's remarkable, really... we know so little about what the bond is, or how it works. It's so much more varied and complex than it's purported to be. Like so many things, our stories make it simplistic, and it's so much more. Did you know that every couple develops their own, unique connection? It takes different shapes, imparts different abilities for different people. Of all the pairs we've studied, each one has been unique."

"None of them, though, have been appropriate subjects for more than cursory research. Even when our girls have bonded with someone, none of them have been suitable for what we're trying to do. Where we've attempted to replicate the process, we've always failed. But you, Agent Barton. Simply put, you are perfect. Have you already begun to see some of the secondary effects? Empathy, sympathetic pain, or telepathy perhaps?"

Adrenaline had burned off the leading edge of whatever they'd given him, making the situation achingly clear. "What the hell makes you think I'd tell you?"

"I'm thinking not, at least not at any strength. The drugs might have interfered, but she doesn't seem aware that you're here yet. I just sent someone to fetch her. I wonder how she'll react? She was always my good girl, so stoic, so strong, despite her rebellious tendencies. I have always wondered what it might take to break her. Together, once we've reconditioned you both, I have a feeling you will exceed even my wildest expectations."

*****

Natasha followed Alexei through the hallways, and her stomach knotted when he headed away from the offices, down towards the interrogation and holding suites. He ushered her into one of them and closed the door, leaving her alone.

It wasn't long before the General entered the room, the same false, pleasant smile on her face as the evening before. "Natalia, my dear," she began, and as she was sometimes wont to do with "her girls" she leaned in close, as if she was going to share a secret or embrace her.

"We stopped by Switzerland this morning," Pogdorni whispered near her ear and she felt, literally _felt_ her blood turn to ice and would swear in that moment she heard wood splinter and glass shatter as her dreams fell in ruins around her feet.

Only years of iron clad control kept her from visibly choking or throwing up on the floor.

"Would you like to see what we found?"

_please no please no please no please no_

"Alright."

Pogdorni stepped back and rapped on the door and a few seconds later it opened and a tightly restrained figure was shoved to the floor at her feet by one of the guards.

Clint landed hard on his right side, and could tell from how he reacted to the impact he'd been drugged. The undercurrent of fear she'd felt all morning crystallized and she realized at least part of it had come from him, from this, she just hadn't known how to recognize it, and was used to pushing her own emotions away. She could see how disoriented he was and knew how much he would hate that feeling, just like she did. There was a matted streak through his hair where someone had hit him and not bothered to wipe away the blood and she could see from the angle his shoulder was bound he was probably in pain.

She pulled on every reserve of control and training she could muster, every bit, and turned to look at her commanding officer with a bored expression on her face.

"I see you found my present."

"Present?"

"He's the one who I convinced to help me escape. He implied he was getting tired of SHIELD's control, so I offered him another option. I told him that if he was willing to give us information, I would see about making it worth his while."

Natasha felt the pain across her cheek as Pogdorni's hand connected and tried to shake the pinpoints of light from her vision. Just like when she'd been a little girl, she held her ground without flinching, but hated that they could still make her feel so afraid, and hated that she couldn't simply fight back without jeopardizing everything.  
"I am not stupid, Natalia. I know what you have been doing these last few years. Did you really think we wouldn't notice your movements? How you snuck around on missions arranging things just so? You've never been out of our sight, girl, and you were foolish to think so."

Pogdorni was also smart enough to know after all these years that Natasha would never break completely. They'd made her too strong for that, but she did like terrorizing those around her whenever she got the chance.

"I'm going to spare you a formal punishment, Natalia, because despite your rebellion, you've brought us a sought after new asset, and I have more important uses for you at present. Besides, the effect would be negligible, since you wouldn't have long to remember and learn from it."

Another guard entered the room, and she was shocked to see Yasha. He looked no different than the last time she'd seen him. "Yasha, take her down to holding until we're ready to proceed," she ordered, then turned to the first guard and pointed at Clint. "Take that one to the research level to begin processing."

She stiffened and Yasha gripped her arm tightly and led her out of the room. "Do not reveal so much, Natasha," he whispered, soft enough that only she could hear him as he led her down the hall. There was video surveillance, but not audio, not out here, and she kept looking forward even though the name took her off guard. No one in the Red Room called her Natasha, always Natalia. It was something she had only ever called herself in her head, until she'd given it to Clint to use.

It wasn't a long walk to the detention cell, and when they reached it he stopped her just before the door to turn her and push her up against the wall until he was crowding into her space in a way that should look threatening, but for the lack of force and weight he was putting behind it.

"Yasha-" she started, but at the sound of the name he cut her off.

"James. I told you once to call me James, Natasha."

It ghosted across her mind then, and she could hear her name in his voice, oddly affectionate and out of sync with everything around them. "You're the one that called me Natasha," she realized. "But that wasn't in Bangkok."

"It was in Minsk. We went there to kill someone."

She didn't remember Minsk, only Thailand, and told him as much. "We had dozens of missions together," he said, "until we tried to leave. Then caught us and then they made you forget, and put me under for a long time, just like they're going to do to you now. They want to study you, Natasha, you and him and the bond that they think you have."

She nodded, she'd gathered as much.

"You won't remember anything at all. Not for a very long time. For you, maybe never." She knew it was different for them, the girls who'd been altered while so very young. It was so much easier for the scientists to take their minds and change them than his. "When we were hiding from them in Reykjavik, you asked me why I'd never tried to leave before. Do you remember that?"  
"No."

"I told you it was because they would always be there and they would always come back, and you didn't believe me. They caught us the next day. The only choice you have, the only way you're ever going to get away is when you die. I can give you that. If you tried to get away, I could make it look like an accident and you would be free of all this."

"I can't do that. I can't just make a decision that would end his life, too, and I'm not ready to die. There's got to be another way. I'm not ready to just give up yet."

There was real sorrow on his face when he stepped back from her and ushered her inside the cell.

*****

Afterward, he watched her through the heavy glass of the observation window. She lay still and quiet on the cot inside. So very different than how he'd seen her other times, full of someone else's life and motion while she drew a mark in to her flame. Most of those memories slid like insubstantial shadows through his mind, brushing against the edges of his consciousness but never solid enough he could grab hold of them and study them to be sure about them. The only thing that was certain was that she, like few others, was important to him.

He knew what was going to happen next, knew what the tanks did. If he'd had it left in him, he'd have cried for her and what he knew they would take away, but he'd lost that ability years ago. His left hand flexed - metal and cervos and microscopic gears that moved soundlessly.

Footsteps alerted him to movement in the hall, and he folded himself back into the shadows near the door like a good sentry rather than let them catch him looking at her. The last thing either of them needed was to be used as leverage against one another again.

*****

"Acting Director Hill. You say that you believe Director Fury was acting irrationally. On what do you base those suppositions? I see here you weren't on the Carrier at the time when Agent Barton brought the Black Widow aboard and subsequently escaped."

"Yes, ma'am. However, I did a thorough review of the logs, reports, and surveillance footage upon my return. I believe that Director Fury allowed personal issues from his previous involvement with another agent to color his judgment and actions in this case. He made decisions that went against established SHIELD regulations and codes, and created a situation that could've easily had international ramifications. He also committed extortion against two separate agents to try and manipulate the situation."

"You have no supporting evidence for any extortion claims," another voice, this time from the shadow on the far left, broke in.

"I have no supporting evidence, other than Agent Coulson's testimony in regards to the threats made towards him. However, in Agent Barton's case, Director Fury's orders to have the Black Widow terminated and the requirement that Agent Barton be the one to do it are fully documented. Even in a situation where her termination was in the best interests of SHIELD and the general public, due to the apparent nature of the connection between Agent Barton and Romanov, he should not have been the one ordered to carry it out." Maria almost felt like she was watching herself from afar, and she was holding onto that detachment with every fiber of her being. To accuse Fury of being emotionally involved and therefore unfit for duty, she needed to present herself as the picture of objectivity and reason. She was damn good at that, but the blacked out silhouettes instead of faces were unnerving.

"And what personal issues are you citing as being responsible for Director Fury's irrationality?" the woman asked evenly, like she was looking over something as mundane as a supply request.

Here was where it got tricky. Maria couldn't reveal that she had a copy of Fury's file, not the parts that referenced Agent Jin.

"It's fairly common knowledge at SHIELD that Director Fury had a similar bond in the past that went badly. I believe that incident, and the ensuing trauma and recovery, have given him an inability to view similar situations in a rational manner. He came to the apparent conclusion that Agent Barton would no longer be capable of loyalty to SHIELD if he formed such a bond and ordered a swift, irrevocable and potentially very destructive action. At that time, both Barton and the Black Widow were in custody and under guard. At that time, he'd made no move to indicate he was disloyal to SHIELD. In fact, the first and only action of his that implied disloyalty was escaping with her after he was put in an untenable position that threatened both of their lives. From a purely practical standpoint, may I also add that he may very well have been acting to protect intel, as the Black Widow had not yet been interrogated. Since she had come into custody willingly, it was Agent Coulson's understanding she was willing to provide important information on the Red Room."

"As a high ranking member of the organization, she would have pivotal information concerning their procedures, missions, and whereabouts of several of their agents."

"Yes, ma'am. That was my feeling as well. If she were willing to become an informant, or possibly even a double agent, it would be very short-sighted to kill her before utilizing her." Personally, it didn't sit well with Maria to view people quite that clinically, even though she did it well. The Council, on the other hand, always seemed to prefer and work strictly on a cost/benefit analysis of situations, and she was willing to play that game if it helped to protect the people under her command.

"We will review the information you've presented to us, Acting Director Hill, and convene a hearing in due course to finalize a decision. In the meantime, you are to remain in charge of SHIELD operations, and continue the search for Agent Barton and the Black Widow. Should you find them, we will allow you some discretion in offering the enemy operative the chance to be cooperative, and the appropriate disciplinary actions to take in regards to Agent Barton's actions. You are to forward us directly any copies of intel you receive on the Red Room, and a threat assessment regarding the nature of Barton and Romanov's bond."

"Yes, ma'am," Maria replied, snapping off a smart salute just before the screens went dark. She didn't allow herself the luxury of leaning against a nearby console, but she did take a moment to press against the muscles at the back of her neck where they were knotted from the tension of the past 36 hours.

Then she opened the door and stepped into the hallway where Coulson was waiting for her. "They've agreed to a hearing regarding Fury's actions, and left the decisions about how to handle Barton and Romanov to me."

"Now let's go find Barton."

*****

Natasha forced herself to sleep, hoping that she would dream.

This time it was a conference center full of glass and wood and chrome. She remembered the mission: she'd been sent to assassinate a French scientist who'd tried to replicate a deadly virus he'd stolen from them. She hadn't even had to seduce him, the idiot had left his drink out in the open unattended, and it had been child's play to slip the poison in. She'd watched to make sure that only he drank it and no other, and once he'd finished it, she'd blended into the background and vanished into the night.

Clint was sitting sprawled across one of the lobby chairs, waiting for her. Natasha took him in, looked for any sign of the injuries she'd seen on him in the interrogation room but here he was blessedly unharmed.

"One of your memories?" he asked, tossing a ball up in the air and catching it, over and over again. When she got close enough, she shot her hand out and grabbed it. In return he reached out and grabbed _her_ , tugging her down onto his lap.

"Yes," she answered, trying to give him a stern look. "What are you doing?"

"Waiting for you. Got here a little while ago, when they injected me with something down in that lab." 

"You seem remarkably calm about all of this," she observed.

"I've been busy thinking. Panic won't help with that. You know this place, these people a hell of a lot better than I do. Have they knocked you out too?"

She shook her head. "No, but they have me locked in a cell and under guard. A very specific guard." He could feel her tension and shifted beneath her until she settled into him further.

"An old friend?"

It took her a long time to answer. "I suppose you could say that, yes. As close as I've ever come to one. More importantly, he's one of the only operatives I can't overpower. James is... different. They've done things to him, enhanced him."

"What do you think they're going to do with us?"

"They're going to recondition us."

"But what does that mean?"

"They'll put us under, maybe for days, maybe for years. I don't know how it works, but they know how to rewire our brains. They'll take out things, memories, personality, skills, and then they'll put others in. Sometimes you're lucky, and they leave you mostly human, mostly real. Other times, all they leave is a... a shell. An empty mind with only one mission or goal within it. Usually a directive to kill." A delicate shudder went through her and he rubbed his hand in slow circles on her back.

"That sounds kind of horrible," he said and she just looked at him. "So what are our alternatives?"

"James offered to kill me. Supposedly, that should kill us both, but I don't know how the bond would affect you if you're already unconscious. It could simply leave you alive and broken."

He looked thoughtful for a minute, and she wondered if he were seriously considering her suggestion.

"What if SHIELD broke us out?"

She almost laughed. "Your people were trying to kill us first, remember?"

"No, my people were trying to capture us."

She raised an eyebrow.

"Okay, fine, they were trying to kill us, but at least we know that's _all_ they want to do, right? And depending... the way that Fury reacted, that wasn't normal. We don't usually do things like that. It's always possible he's come down off whatever weird vendetta he was on and come to his senses by now. But either way, that's better than being turned into puppets, right?"

She nodded. "I would rather be dead than some of the things they'll do to us, yes."

"How much do you trust your friend? If he offered to kill you before they could experiment on you, do you think he'd be willing to do something else for you?"

Natasha thought about it. James seemed genuinely concerned for her, and his offer had seemed sincere. She didn't precisely trust him, but he was the closest thing they had to an ally. "It's possible."

"I have a code. Every SHIELD agent gets one. If it gets sent out on just about any frequency SHIELD can pick it up and they'll know what it means and coming running. It means agent down, bring help immediately. They're already looking for us, and this would bring them in full force. Do you think he could get it out?"

"And then what? We're inside a heavily secured facility."

"Babe, you have no idea the kind of firepower SHIELD can bring to bear when it wants to. They have treaties with half a dozen European nations besides their own in-house units. Maybe, _maybe_ if you were expecting an all out attack? Then you might have a chance of holding us off. But they won't be. Why would they?"

She rolled the idea around in her mind, because he had a point. Years of being unchallenged, of remaining hidden, had made aspects of the Red Room complacent. They had always focused more on experimentation and covert operations than active combat. They'd never done anything to draw attention to their major bases of operations. Oh, their security was top notch, but it wasn't designed to take on a full frontal assault such as the one Clint was implying SHIELD was capable of. She'd seen the carrier firsthand, and it was an impressive piece of technology and weaponry.

A quick death in battle, or even a simple and direct execution _would_ be preferable to the complete loss of self the Red Room's procedures promised.

"Give me the code. I'll see what I can do."

*****

She woke up to James's hand on her shoulder, shaking her gently. He caught the defensive hand she raised easily, and made a soft, soothing noise like he'd done such a thing before. Perhaps he had - if he were right then she didn't remember most of their history after all. He leaned in close so that he could hear her and she could hear him with only the barest breath of sound between them.

"It's almost time, Natasha. They're almost done with Barton and they'll be coming for you in a few hours. Have you thought anymore about what I offered you?"

"Yes. But I think I have a better plan. Do you think you could get a message out for me?"

He frowned. "What kind of message?"

"To Barton's people. To SHIELD. He gave me a code, it would act as a distress signal. He thinks it would be enough to bring them here." She kept her voice as low as she possibly could and hoped that they hadn't upgraded their audio capabilities since the last time she'd had someone in one of these rooms.

"I have access to communications, but Natasha, I don't think-"

"Don't. I have to try this first, James. If it doesn't work... if it doesn't work, if they do erase me, and you have the chance, then you have my permission to kill me then. But I have to take this chance."

"Your hope has always been your biggest weakness, Natashka. You know that, right?" The endearment sounded so familiar coming from him, and she wondered how many times she'd heard it that they'd made her forget. "I'll do this, for you. But I want a promise in return."

"Name it."

"If this works, and they come and take you and your agent away? Make sure to kill me before you go. I'm tired, and they've already broken my mind too many times. I know it and they know it, but they'll never stop. It will never end unless I put a stop to it, but the conditioning won't let me. I've tried," he admitted and her heart ached for him. "I trust you to do it right, Natashka. This one last thing."

She wanted to cry then. She wouldn't, there was too much at stake, but oh, how she wanted to. "Alright. I promise, if I have to, I'll make sure they don't get to keep you."

He studied her for a moment, then squeezed her hand and let her go.

"I'll see if they'll allow you any food or water, but it's unlikely with the procedure coming up," he said loudly enough she knew the speakers would pick it up. "I'll be back soon to escort you."

He left, and she knew without having to see it that another guard took his place. She lay back on the cot and stared at the ceiling, prepared to wait.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Interlude: Antiphon](http://archiveofourown.org/works/873717) was published between Chapters 12 and 13.


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein things might explode.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More notes can be found on Chapter 1.
> 
> Kadollan and SweetWaterSong are still the best. :D Any remaining errors are my own.
> 
> [Interlude: Antiphon](http://archiveofourown.org/works/873717) was published between Chapters 12 and 13.

James Buchanan Barnes had become an expert at showing nothing in his eyes but blank boredom, and they were egotistical enough to believe he was entirely their creature, without a will unless they gave him one. They were wrong, of course. He'd remembered enough for years now to know who he'd been before the ice and snow, even if it usually felt like a story someone had told him a long time ago.

The only person, in all that time, who had ever given him any hope that maybe there was something more for him than this life, this life of death and horror and cold, was Natasha. In her, he'd seen something of himself he'd thought was irrevocably lost, something he thought maybe he'd just imagined. So he would do this, for her.

The communications room was laughably easy for him to get to. He was a legend here, and most of the regular staff and military personnel lived in awe and no little fear of the creations the Red Room had produced. They didn't question someone as high up as he was, it didn't occur to them to do so. So they let him in, and he accessed the system, and typed in the simple string of numbers that Natasha thought could save her. 

He didn't think anything could save them from this, but for her, he was willing to try one more time.

*****

"What've we got, Coulson?" Maria asked when he walked into her office. 

"I'm searching all the traffic cameras, video feeds, and facial recognition software we have access to in southern Germany, eastern France, and Switzerland. They're both good at their jobs though, and know how to take precautions and countermeasures."

She nodded. If Romanov didn't want to be found, she certainly wouldn't be, and Barton was a quick study. He'd be almost as hard to track. "Did we get anything from the forger in Amsterdam or the members of the drug ring you rounded up?"

"Other than they'd really like Romanov dead? No. They're still in custody, but I doubt they've got anymore useful intel. The surveillance is our best bet, slim as it is. Have you thought about how you plan to handle it if we get them back?"

She had, although she didn't want to make any concrete plans until she'd heard what Barton had to say. "They gave me enough leeway that it really depends on Barton, and on what Romanov can bring to the table. They'll want intel, if they can get it, if she's smart she can use that as a bargaining chip. If she has enough of any value, I should be able to keep arguing that he was trying to act in SHIELD's best interest and preserve an asset. Since he managed not to kill anyone on his way out the door, they'd probably take that. Hell, they probably won't care how I write it up so long as they get their data. He acted in self-preservation, because the orders from Fury could've been interpreted as deliberate suicide." Since it was just the two of them, she rubbed a hand over her eyes and rolled her neck to try to stretch out some of the tension hiding there. "I can probably get him off the hook with an official reprimand in his jacket depending on how Fury's trial shakes out."

"And his connection with Romanov?"

"Well, that's up to her, isn't it? It wouldn't be the first time we've turned an enemy agent and used her for our side. If she actually does make a solid connection to Barton, that's another point in her favor. I won't know until I have all the variables, Phil. Right now, let's just focus on bringing them home."

*****

It took all the control she possessed to go quietly when they came to lead her to the lab. She could remember, in bits and pieces, having been there before, and she understood what would happen when she got there. They would drug her and she would sleep, and when she woke up, she would be someone else. Nightmares sometimes touched on the bits in between, but she never let them take up residence in her mind. So her instinct was to fight, even though she knew it was futile, even though she knew there were too many and she was restrained and still weak from the sedative the night before.

But if she fought now, they would lose whatever chance they had. Resistance would seal their fate, and trap all three of them in the near endless cycle of wiping and rewriting that Yasha - _James_ , she reminded herself - was already in.

The corridors were dimly lit at night in the sub-basement levels. Alexi and Mikhail flanked her on either side, and one of the orderlies brought up the rear. He looked just as fit as the two agents, and she imagined he was, if not equally well trained, still no slouch at hand-to-hand combat. She tracked in her head the number of steps, noted the position of hallways, doors, and air vents. All potential escape routes or hideaways should they need them.

If he'd been able to send the message, if SHIELD had received it, how long could she reasonably assume it would take them to respond? Would they respond at all?

She had to believe they were coming, because the alternative was unacceptable. If they were still searching for them in Europe (and they had no reason not to be), they had the capability of being there in a matter of hours. Until she could look at James face to face, she wouldn't know for sure if he'd sent it, and even after she had confirmation, she wouldn't know how long. But if he'd managed it and if he followed her lead, the lab would be the best place to break free, particularly if they waited until after they'd started pumping the drugs into her system. They would let their guard down then, and James would have the element of surprise. She'd have precious few seconds to disconnect the IV and still remain useful, but it was a risk she had to take.

James had warned her they'd already put Clint under, but she still felt her heart rate double and her stomach clench when the doors opened and she saw him there in one of the tanks. They always looked so calm and peaceful, when she knew very well the reality was anything but.

There was no way to know, until they got him out, how much damage they'd done thus far.

"Natalia Alianova," the supervisory researcher, Gribkov, greeted her as if she was a beloved patient stopping by for tea. The aging, stooped man had always made her skin crawl. "Always my most successful creation, and now we will go beyond our expectations, won't we? Just strap her in over there," he directed, and Alexei jerked her roughly across the room.

When they reached the table, he physically picked her up and set her on it, making quick work of transferring her wrists from the manacles to the attached restraints. She struggled, just enough to seem plausible, but not enough to break their grip. Egotistical as he was, Alexei only sneered, rather than suspect her sudden weakness and silence. She had always been able to play him that way.

She turned her head away from them, and that put James directly in her line of sight.

 _Please,_ she thought to herself, _give me some kind of sign._

"Start the first drip," Gribkov ordered, and she felt the needle sliding into her arm, but saw the subtle, almost non-existent tilt to James's head.

Then the entire building shook.

Hope flared in her chest and she tensed her body, ready to strike. James didn't disappoint her, either. He was sudden and swift, and even as she felt the beginning of the medicine hitting her system and another blast echoed in the distance, he struck out and there was a sickening sound as Mikhail's head hit a nearby bank of equipment. Alexei was similarly caught off-guard as she twisted her body and caught him hard in the side with her legs. He stumbled, but didn't go down. He moved enough to jerk the line out of her arm though, and that's what she'd been aiming for. He made the mistake of grabbing her legs, and she used her momentum and the resistance of the restraints to put her entire force behind throwing him towards the ground. When she looked up, James had leveled his pistol at Gribkov and the smile on his face would've turned her blood to ice if she'd been on the receiving end of it.

"I've waited a very, very long time to do this," he said coldly, and she saw blood bloom between Gribkov's eyes as the gun went off.

Alexei tackled him then, abandoning her in favor of the unencumbered threat, and she struggled with the drugs that had made it into her system and tried to get her hands free. He tackled James to the floor, but while Alexei was good, one of their best, he was unenhanced and didn't have the years and years of additional experience and instinct that James had. She heard Alexei's neck break, and couldn't find it in herself to be upset about it.

"It sounds like the cavalry's here," James murmured as he worked to unfasten her wrists. As she sat up and shook her head to try to clear it, he went to the door and made sure to engage the security locks. "That'll buy us a little bit of time, but if we're taking Barton, you'd better get him out of there."

Natasha was already looking over the consoles, but none of them made any particular sense. She was good with computers, but she needed time she didn't have. "Any chance you know how any of this works?" Her hands were surprisingly steady as she worked the controls, but she knew that if she made the wrong move she could do more damage than good. In the tanks, the machines were doing all the work for his body, breathing, fluids, everything except the actual beating of his heart was being controlled by the system.

James pushed her out of the way, scanning the electronics. "Get adrenaline from that cabinet over there," he pointed across the room and cursed as more alarms started going off and the system shut down. "We'll break the glass and do it old fashioned way!" he yelled over the increasing noise. There were sounds of a battle being waged outside, maybe a few corridors over or just above them, she couldn't be sure, but it was getting closer.

She sifted through the vials and syringes as quickly as she could, finally finding several doses in pre-filled injectable pens. She jabbed one into her own leg, then brought the rest over to where he was using a fire extinguisher tank to try and break through the bullet-resistant tank walls.

"How do you know that won't kill him?"

"Back in the 80's, there was an emergency evacuation of one of the research facilities. They had to break the tank because the systems were all shot, so they filled us full of stimulants to jump-start our systems and hoped for the best. He's not enhanced like we were, but we don't have the luxury of another option right now." The glass finally gave with a sickening noise, and the fluid inside started to flow out onto the floor. He kept bashing at the edges until they had an opening large enough to reach in and disconnect the wires and tubing, then pull Clint out and onto the floor.

"Use three to start with, hopefully his heart can take it," James instructed. He left her to it and went to Alexei and Mikhail's bodies to strip them of weapons and anything else useful he could find.

She muttered under her breath as she jabbed one pen after the other into him, frustrated that all she could really do was wait the precious seconds it would take to see if he would respond.

The door shuddered from some kind of impact, and James slipped behind a bank of servers and gestured for her to follow. She hooked her arms under Clint's from behind and pulled him to cover, then took the pistols that James handed her.

She heard Clint moan and saw his eyelids start to flutter just as the door gave way, and then she had to focus all her attention on taking out the guards who came pouring in. James went through two clips, and she went through one before it seemed to slow and James stood up to actually go and look through the doorway down the hall.

"Is he awake yet?" he asked, keeping his gun trained on the corridor.

She checked, and Clint's pulse seemed steadier, and she could tell he was trying to open his eyes. 

"Clint? Clint, come on, I need you back with me, alright?" She slapped him, not exactly gently, but more to startle than to bruise, and by the third time his hand shot up to grab hers.

"Stop that!" he coughed out, then grimaced in pain, his throat still raw from the tubing.

"Welcome back to the living," she said in reply, and it was more affectionate than she'd meant for it to sound. "You've got to get up, can you stand?"

"Not sure. Did ya get the number of the train that hit me?" He wobbled on his legs and she had to help support a good deal of his weight. Seeing the problem, James came back over without taking his eyes off the door to help support Clint's other side.

"There was no train, Clint."

"It's an expression," he mumbled. "Damn my head hurts."

"That'll happen," James offered, not sounding terribly sympathetic. "Ready to go?"

Natasha nodded, and, much more slowly than she'd have liked, they started making their way out of the lab. This part of the building hadn't been designed for battle scenarios, there were too many curves and blind corners, but if they were quiet enough, they could mostly hear someone coming before they saw them. 

She could tell there was still quite a battle raging above, but had no clear way of knowing who was winning. When they dropped a heavily-armed guard wearing a headset, she took the time to pick it up and put it in her own ear to get an idea of what was going on.

"They've got three teams on the roof, and another six still in the buildings, but it doesn't sound like it's going very well. It sounds like they've taken the trainees out the back way, and that she's left someone to coordinate destroying the physical materials here."

"He's going to blow the facility?"

Natasha nodded. Of course they would rather destroy everything they could rather than let it fall into SHIELD's hands. 

"How long do we have?" Clint croaked out, trying to balance his weight on his own feet between the two of them.

"Maybe three minutes? Possibly less if he's already triggered the countdown."

"Then what are we waiting for? What's the fastest way out of this dump?"

****

The fastest way turned out to be the stairs, sending Natasha up first to clear out any hostiles that might be ahead of them and then James bringing up the rear with Clint thrown over his shoulder, a move that Clint had protested right up until he'd realized that he couldn't move nearly as quickly as the uninjured, enhanced super-soldier could.

The main level was a madhouse, which surprisingly worked in their favor, as the Red Room operatives had switched from defense to evacuation. The SHIELD agents seemed to have picked up on the change in behavior, because they, too, seemed to be mostly occupied with getting out of the building in the wake of the shrieking alarms that had started going off. The message to evacuate the premises was in Ukrainian and Russian, but either they all spoke one of the two, or the tone of voice transcended the language barrier.

At the top of the stairs Clint had struggled enough James had put him back down on his own two feet, and they all limped along out of the building and onto the pavement and gravel beyond. They'd made it about fifteen feet away when the charges blew, and everyone flattened themselves face-first onto the ground.

Natasha's ears rang, and she groped along until she found Clint's hand, relaxing slightly when he gave hers a good strong squeeze back. She rolled over and sat up, and saw to her left that James was doing the same. To her right, Clint had flipped over onto his back and was just lying there, dragging in air like someone who'd just been drowning. She shook her head and a fine dusting of debris fell from her hair.

"Oh, thank god," she heard a voice say, and it was vaguely familiar. She looked up to see the same agent that had met them when they'd first gotten onto the Helicarrier a week prior. Beside her, James had out one of his guns pointed directly at the man.

"No need for that," the agent said almost pleasantly. "Barton, what the hell did you think you were doing?"

"Thought you needed a little adventure, Coulson. I found you a present." He gestured with one hand towards what was left of the facility without bothering to lift his head up off the ground.

The agent's eyes flicked up and down the building burning behind them. "A present. Next year, how about we stick with something more traditional like a tie, or a nice pen?"

"You're no fun," Clint muttered, but Natasha could see he was almost smiling. "So're you gonna kill us now? Fury'd said something about that..."

"Fury is no longer in charge," Coulson said carefully. "Whether or not Hill wants to kill you will probably depend on just how much of a financial drain this little rescue mission turns out to be."

Clint started to laugh, relief and adrenaline combining to just the right side of hysterics, and to her surprise Natasha found herself wanting to laugh along with him. James still had his gun out, but as two other armed SHIELD agents approached, he decided better of it and slowly laid it down, putting his hands up in the air.

One of the agents, a dark haired woman, holstered her weapon once she was close enough to really see them, and fisted her hands on her hips. "You're going to owe me big for this one, Barton, you can count on it."

"Hill," he sighed, and it almost sounded happy. A friend then, Natasha determined, though that idea still seemed foreign to her, and not something to be used in conjunction with superior officers.

"We're going to have to cuff you, all three of you," she continued, and the gentle teasing of her previous comment fell away under a very business-like tone. "Barton, we'll have to work out what to do with you once we get this wrapped up, but-"

"He didn't betray you," Natasha found herself blurting out. "I forced him to help me, and brought him along. He didn't give up any information about SHIELD. I can give you everything I know about the Red Room, but please. He doesn't deserve to be punished for something he didn't do."

*****

Clint blinked, then he did force himself to sit up. "Nat, you don't have to-" he wasn't sure how to put it. He had an idea of what she was expecting to happen, but he wasn't sure quite how to reassure her because he still didn't know, himself, where all this was going. But one thing was sure, he wasn't about to have her exchanging one cage for another. With more effort than he would've liked, he struggled to his feet, and the agents around them let him, mostly because of the warning look both Maria and Phil shot them when they started to take a step forward.

He lurched towards them, just enough to brace himself against Maria when she reached out to help and then to pull her a few feet away from the group.

"I don't know what you've done or how you managed it, and I know I'm at the top of your shit list right now, but I have a huge, huge favor to ask you."

The look on her face was more concerned than angry. "Clint, whatever you're about to say-"

"Maria. Please." He made sure he was looking her straight in the eyes. "Whatever disciplinary action you have to bring against me, that's fine. I disobeyed orders, I broke protocol, I helped an enemy agent. Whatever. I'm just asking you for two things, here. That's it. I will owe you everything, for just these two things."

She met his stare, and waited for him to continue. "Don't kill me, because it wouldn't just be killing _me_... and let her go. I know-" he rushed on, because she opened her mouth to protest, "I know how important her intel would be. But she's been a prisoner her whole damn life. All she wants is a chance to be free. Really free. We take that for granted every damn day and she's never had that. The things they've done... you have no idea. You can say she vanished in the confusion, or that you think she was killed in the fire, or something. Anything. But please, just let her walk away."

"I thought you two were bonded. Don't you-" 

"We are. It doesn't matter. This is what she wants, I know it is. That's what matters."

"I made a deal with the Council, Clint. Part of the way I convinced them that you hadn't gone completely AWOL was by arguing that you were protecting valuable intel against Fury's orders. They agreed because they want what she knows. Without that, I can't promise what they'll do in response. They can countermand my orders," she added, and he knew what she was implying. The Council could order his execution just as quickly as Fury had.

"I have intel. The same intel she does, probably more."

They both turned as the other man, who Clint had surmised was James, spoke up.

"And you are?" Hill asked in what Clint thought of as her no-nonsense "military" tone.

"Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes, formerly of the US Army's 107th and the Howling Commandos."

It was the closest Clint had ever seen Maria Hill come to doing a double-take. "You were killed in action in 1944." And of course she'd have that fact close to hand, Clint thought to himself, because he wasn't the only one who'd listened to Phil wax rhapsodic about it time and time again.

"Didn't Twain say something about the rumors of his demise?" James said with a wry twist to his mouth. 

"We'll have to take you into custody, but if you've got useful information we can see where we can go from there," she finally relented, and he nodded, setting his hands behind his back so that the nearby agent could cuff him. They'd already cuffed Natasha, but Clint, now mostly mobile, took her by the arm and guided her off to one side.

"Give them a minute, agent," he could hear Hill saying but suddenly it was just background noise. Once they were at the edge of the area SHIELD had cleared away, he unfastened the cuffs with the key Maria had just slipped him and took them off her wrists. 

"You're free to go," he murmured softly, reaching up and brushing some of the dusty hair back away from her face. He looked into her eyes trying to figure out what was going inside of her. He could feel it, mostly, but didn't think he had the words for the insane tumble of emotions that he could feel running through her.

"You heard her. Even with James's intel, if they go back without me-"

"No one will do anything. As long as they have the information they want, the Council won't care." 

"And what about you? About us?"

He cradled her face in his hands and she brought hers up to grip his wrists. 

"I'll live. I'll miss you like hell, but I'll live. Don't think for a second that I don't want you around, because I do, but I understand why you need to go. That's one of the perks of this whole arrangement, right? Being able to understand one another?"

Through that understanding, he knew that very few things had ever made her cry, and also that she was currently on the verge of it, and a part of her hated that fact. So he kissed her, hard and deep, distracting them both for a second. "I'll really fucking miss you," he repeated as they broke the kiss and he rested his forehead against hers. "You'd better go before she changes her mind."

"Close your eyes," she whispered softly, and he felt her lips ghost over his one last time. When he opened them, she was gone.


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Let's stitch the world back together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kadollan and SweetWaterSong make this story so much better. :D

The man stood on the tarmac, eerily still despite how the wind from the helicopter blades were whipping at the edge of his coat. He still had the bitter taste of his deposition before the Council in the back of his mouth and still felt the weight that had come crashing down on him when Hill had shown up in his office and thrown a lifetime of grief and pain back in his face.

It was a minor miracle they hadn't just ordered that he be locked away, or even killed for being too much of a liability. He knew now, looking back, that he'd been on the cusp of being completely out of control - she hadn't even been _wrong_ about that - but if it had happened once, there was nothing that would keep it from happening again. 

The Council was nothing if not practical. They weren't inclined, they'd said, to get rid of what could still be a useful asset. Just in a different capacity.

They'd made their offer privately, after the more visible offer of full "retirement". He could come and work for them as an off-the-record operative or they could take more extreme measures. 

He jumped at the chance, knowing both them and himself well enough to know that any other retirement wouldn't last long enough for him to need a pension. 

The door to the helicopter opened then, and he focused his attention on the people being helped down. His new position had come with other benefits besides staying among the living. He had a certain autonomy, a certain leeway to make things happen. This might not've been quite how the Council had intended him to utilize it, but he figured in the grand scheme of things, what was the worst they could do if they found out?

He owed it to her.

He wouldn't go speak to them. There were translators and counselors on hand to help them adjust, a stack of completed, official immigration forms that would stand up to the strictest scrutiny, and he'd already arranged for housing and financial assistance until they were able to get on their feet in their new home. Twenty seven people, all that was left so many years later of her family in North Korea. They'd be safe now. He wasn't sure if he believed in ghosts, or in an afterlife (most days he was fairly certain he didn't) but if there was something else, maybe now she could find some peace in this.

*****

Maria knocked on the door frame more for form's sake than anything else. Coulson never left his door open if he minded having visitors.

"Hello," he said easily as she came into the room.

"Hello, yourself. How's Barnes doing?" she asked and took a seat across from his desk.

"As well as can be expected. They're working with him, seeing if they can recover any more of his memories with a couple of different techniques, and making sure there aren't any underlying triggers hiding in his head. It's better because he's cooperating fully with the psychiatric staff. He's given us a huge amount of information we didn't have previously on the Red Room and their operations. We've already gotten enough intel to clear out at least three additional cells."

"It's hard to believe. That he's really who he says he is, I mean."

"All the records we have for comparison check out, even given the amount of time since most of them were recorded."

"How's Barton holding up?" 

"You know as well as I do that he's ready to go back to active fieldwork next week," Coulson replied, and gave her his patented 'I know you're fishing for something' look.

"Bobbi said you were talking about resigning," Maria ventured. "Last time I checked, you said you couldn't imagine working anywhere besides SHIELD."

"I have been thinking about it. I can't go to Madeline and ask her to be involved with me if I'm out here risking what amounts to both of our lives on a daily basis. It's not fair to her." 

Maria nodded. "I can understand that."

Silence descended between them, and it wasn't exactly uncomfortable, but it was weighty.

"Is there anything else?" Coulson finally asked, and Maria hid a smile that he'd given in first.

"I'm promoting Chang to Deputy Director and I need someone to head up the Agent training program stateside. It's not terribly exciting, mostly paperwork and planning, chairing meetings and even giving lectures and speeches.

"I need someone I trust to run the program, Phil, and I wondered if you were willing to reconsider your resignation?"

She saw his shoulders visibly relax, more than they had in a very long time, and a real smile crossed his face.

"You know? I think I might."

*****

Three months after they returned, Barnes tracked him down while he was having dinner in the mess hall.

Maybe it was the years of isolation, or maybe the Red Room had just trained them to all be direct, but he didn't bother with pleasantries. "Have you heard anything from Natasha?" he asked in between mouthfuls of the fake mashed potatoes always seemed to be on the menu.

Clint arched an eyebrow, but he'd figured the question would come sooner or later. "Not really, no. Got some intel a little while back she was working in France on a job." It wasn't that he didn't trust Barnes in particular, but if he'd learned nothing else in their stint in Kiev, he'd learned it was better not to talk about what he and Nat could do. 

The look he received clearly said that Barnes didn't believe him. "You're just gonna leave her out there, then?"

"I didn't _leave_ her anywhere. I just gave her room to make her own choice about where she goes and what she does. Who she is. Which based on what I've seen, is something precious few people have given her. She wants to be here? She can be here. She wants to be in France doing heists and hits? That's what she gets to do."

"There are still factions of the Red Room left active, you know. They'll be looking for her."

"Some people kind of wonder why you left," Clint said, changing the subject slightly. "All kinds of reasons for you to come in now are running around in people's heads around here. Maybe you just saw and out and you took it, but the way I see it? You did it all for her."

"You're probably not wrong," Barnes responded after a minute. 

Clint wondered if he ought to feel threatened, but the feel of Natasha in his arms was still fresh from his dreams the night before and the sense of their bond was rock solid. So it was mostly simple curiosity that had him asking: "Are you in love with her?"

Barnes thought about it awhile. "No," he finally said, with a level of certainty that came from really having considered the issue. "I don't think either one of us knew how to be in love. Maybe neither one of us was even capable of it, back then. But she was... _is_ important to me. Sometimes she was the only thing that felt real, and she's closest thing I've got to a family. So I guess this is where I give you the big brother speech, and tell you if you ever hurt her... well, you'd answer to her first, and I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy, but if there was anything left of you, then you'd have to answer to me."

He offered a smile, and Clint thought maybe he could see a little bit of the cocky young soldier he'd been in the black and white photos from his file. 

"She doesn't remember a lot of things," Barnes finally said when the silence started to feel like it was going to smother them both. "We were their top team for a long time. I helped train her, and she was flawless. Unparalleled in her skills and her follow-through. But she had this rebellious streak. She was smart about it, kept it quiet, but the more we were alone together on missions the more she opened up about it. She knew I was different than the other operatives they'd trained. By then... I'd already been worked over for years. The mind can only take so much, you know? It was harder and harder for them to turn me into someone else, so they usually resorted to more mundane tactics. And hell, where was I supposed to go, anyway?

"I'd tried to run away, before. They always found me. The could track me through this," he held up his arm, the prosthetic, and the shiny surface reflected the light. "Not the part on the outside that I could get rid of, either. The stuff they stuck in my brain to make it work right. So after awhile, I guess I just believed they were invincible. But she didn't. She talked me into trying it again, and one night we just left. Finished the mission and walked away. We got as far as Iceland before they found us."

He pushed the remaining food around his plate, then abruptly shoved it all away. "They couldn't really make me forget anymore. So they made her forget, instead. Then they put me under for a very, very long time. She never forgot that she wanted to leave though, did she?"

"No. She had a plan. I kind of upset things a little bit," Clint admitted. 

"I bet," Barnes deadpanned, and Clint couldn't help but laugh. "Look, I don't know how you're talking to her, and it's none of my business. But if you have a chance, could you give her a message for me?"

"Sure," he said, mostly because he was curious to see where it was going.

"Tell her that promise I made her make? She can forget about it. I'm good, and I don't need her to hold up her end of the bargain anymore."

*****

The reception area of the Symphony Center was packed with concert-goers, patrons, and musicians. The charity gala had been a huge success, and the after party was a sparkling black-tie affair. 

The symphony center was packed with visitors, but the orchestra liked to foster goodwill among the community and encouraged its musicians to mingle with the after-concert crowd. Since they'd just finished a benefit concert for the children's wing of a local hospital it was virtually mandatory, and Madeline had rushed through putting her instrument away and changing her clothes.  
He was here.

She knew it, right down to her bones. She'd known it from the moment she'd set foot on the stage, and her certainty had only grown with each passing minute.

He'd been there before, but he'd always left before the end of the last piece. Juliet called her crazy, when she'd tried to explain what it felt like, but she believed in that feeling, and in him, more than she'd ever believed in anything else in her life. And tonight, instead of leaving, he'd stayed. She'd lost her sense of him when she'd gone backstage, and that had been wrenching. It was an aching relief when the feeling settled back over her as she moved back into the crowded reception area.

She had no idea how to find him in the crowd. 

"Maddy!" Juliet called from several feet away, and she walked over to join the small crowd that had formed near the fountain. Juliet handed her a glass of champagne.

"He's here somewhere, Julie," she said a little breathlessly. "He stayed this time, and he's here."

"Mad-"

"Miss Hargrove?" the voice cut through the sound of voices swelling around them, and she felt her heart jump in her chest. She had to force herself to turn around, equal parts hopeful and afraid that it might be true.

He looked, if not exactly like she remembered him from ten years previous, then still just like she'd expected him to. He stood like he had that night so long ago, hands clasped easily behind his back, casual, but still with a slightly military air about him. She'd often wondered if he were ex-military, and not just because of how that particular night had turned out.

She could feel how much she was smiling, and could see the hopeful, eager expression he was trying to hide under a mask of calm control. "I'm afraid I don't know your name," she blurted out. "I don't think it's really Reinhardt."

His grin escaped then, and it made his eyes light up. "Phil. Phil Coulson," he introduced himself, but still didn't hold out his hand.

Juliet was gaping like a fish beside her, and Madeline not-so-subtly elbowed her until she closed her mouth.

"I'm Madeline, but everyone calls me Maddy. I've been waiting for you."


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Meeting again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kadollan and SweetWaterSong make this story so much better. Still. Some more. :D 
> 
> I owe everyone a huge thank you. I love and appreciate every single comment, piece of feedback, and kudo that I've received. It's the end of this part of Clint and Natasha's story, but not the end of this particular universe or these characters.

_One Year Later_

It was cold and raining when he arrived in Amsterdam, and the weather hadn't improved any by the time he left his hotel and wandered along the river to the small cafe. Clint ordered a coffee when he sat down.

And then he waited.

He'd wondered if he'd be able to feel her. If being in the same country, or the same city, or the same street would be close enough proximity for that "sense" of her to return. It had dulled to a vague echo, never quite as intense as it had been in those first frantic days, and he didn't know if that was a natural result of time and settling or if they'd stretched it too thin for too long. They hadn't had enough time to find out before everything had gone to hell. 

At the moment, Clint couldn't feel anything past the knot in his stomach, heavy like a lead weight. 

She'd left.

He'd let her go.

It was the hardest thing he'd ever had to do, because he knew that despite SHIELD gutting the Red Room headquarters, and taking down a large portion of their chain of command, there were still plenty of active members and operatives, many of whom would love to get their hands on the Black Widow. She'd been circumspect, but hadn't kept herself completely off the map. He'd watched after her as closely, but he'd never gone so far as to follow her to whatever city or job she'd found herself in. She'd wanted that distance, so he'd respected that.

He knew his place was at her back and he wanted to protect her, but he also understood what she needed to prove, to herself if no one else.

So he sat in the cold iron chair, coffee untouched at his elbow, and he waited.

*****

Natasha stared at her reflection in the mirror and removed the wig she'd worn to the meet. Instead of arranging it neatly on its stand, she dumped it unceremoniously into the trash bin. She wouldn't be needing it anymore. 

She'd dyed her hair brown first, then black, changing it periodically as she'd skipped across Europe despite her intel proving that the Red Room had, in fact, been badly splintered by SHIELD. She felt freer than she ever had in her life, and thought changing her hair color was a small price to pay for that new reality. 

She's spent the last year in a variety of ways. 

She'd killed a man in Prague, then taken a burglary job in Milan with competing collectors, then she'd spent four months working on corporate espionage in London. There she'd turned herself into an average English secretary, had gone out with her co-workers for drinks or to shows, spent weekends shopping or on the occasional visit to the countryside. It had almost been like a vacation, a chance to see "how the other half lived." When she went to dinner with other women from the office, they'd suggested potential dates and she'd brushed them off with a small half-smile. The subject of bonds had come up from time to time, and she'd listened intently, ignoring the tugging in her chest.

Two months ago, she'd cut her hair short and had switched to wigs while the dyes faded and her true color grew back in. She wasn't sure what told her that it was time - a change in the wind, perhaps. She'd never considered herself a fanciful person before, hadn't realized she had the capacity for it, but she was discovering now that she did. In the early morning, or very late night she allowed herself to wonder if that had come from Clint's influence or if it had always been within her. That same fanciful streak let her imagine butterflies doing an intricate dance in her stomach as she watched the clock tick towards noon. It would take her fifteen minutes to walk from her hotel to the cafe, with an extra five minutes added on, just in case. 

She felt like she was suspended in time, standing on the precipice of something larger than herself. She'd glimpsed that feeling once before, but this was bigger. More. They'd let her go and she knew it was because James had offered and Clint had asked, had bargained and begged to give her time to escape and to keep them from coming after her. 

He'd let her go, despite what he wanted.

At first the dreams between them, which had continued no matter the distance, had made her feel like she was breaking apart and losing her mind. That everything she remembered with him had been some kind of a lie. She had moments where she thought she was being childish to think it was all real - but she'd wanted to believe them so _badly_. All her life she'd subsisted on the information that the Red Room had handed her, trusting them blindly to tell her the truth. They'd presented soul bonds as a weakness, of course, because it had been her job to exploit it. As a trick to manipulate those around her.

Clint always knew when she was too close to that edge, and she would find some kind of token or reminder in her mail a few days later. Something to prove that he really was out there, and the dreams really were real.

She often felt like something essential was missing, not from within herself but from her side. She expected to see him out of the corner of her eye, expected to hear not only his voice but the rhythm of his steps or the sound of his breathing. It made the world around her feel hollow and echo the way an empty room did. Night had become her favorite time of day, because at night she could dream.

Sometimes he was there, but their nights didn't always coincide, depending on where they were and what their current missions were. At first they'd mostly dreamed themselves into a tangle of limbs and bare skin, but there were also quiet moments and whispered conversations. She knew he'd been in Cambodia and Thailand, then Greece and Peru and Cameroon. He knew that she'd successfully double-crossed the French art collector because the Italian had been willing to pay more, and that she'd had a closer call in Prague than he'd liked to have thought about. 

He'd given her a message from James that had made her heart soar in new and unexpected ways, with relief and something warm and affectionate that teased at old memories.

She told him what it had been like to watch a new musical from the cheap seats in the Palace Theatre, and he'd shown her the beach near his job in Kalamaki and promised her he'd take her back someday when they were together again. It was as close as he ever got to asking her to come back to him. He'd gone so far as to make it clear, not too long after she'd first left that if she ever wanted it she could have a job with SHIELD.

"They'd do handstands and cartwheels," he'd promised her, "and not because they want to study you or take apart your head. You'd make a fantastic agent. Barnes seems to have taken to it like a duck to water. You probably would, too."

She hadn't had the heart to tell him that James had been American and military before he'd been anything else, and she wasn't so sure it was the right place for her. But she'd kept his offer under consideration, and finally, when she simply couldn't stand it anymore, couldn't stand the empty feeling and the vague but growing, echoing sense of loss, she'd whispered:

_"Meet me in Amsterdam, at the cafe."_

*****

Her hair was shorter than he remembered it. In their dreams, she'd still had a long riot of curls. Clint felt like he couldn't breathe as she walked towards him and he wondered if she felt the same way. He wasn't even aware that he'd stood up until she'd got close enough he could see and meet her eyes.

She stopped next to him, barely inches away, and it was like the first night all over again, like standing on the cliff's edge and waiting to take the step.

"Do you want this?" he asked hoarsely, and she still knew that what he was asking was _do you want me_?

This time, she had an answer.

"Yes."

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Heavy in Your Arms: Podfic](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1140953) by [litrapod (litra)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/litra/pseuds/litrapod)




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